


Superstition Ain't the Way

by ArtemisTheHuntress



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Curses, Gen, Ghost Hunting, Ghost angst, Ghosts, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humor, Lovelace deals with so much, Minkowski deals with so much, Questionable academic theories that will get you denied tenure, Slice of Life, Time Loop, Time Shenanigans, aliens???, some spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24764611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisTheHuntress/pseuds/ArtemisTheHuntress
Summary: “Uhhhhhhhhhh Commander?” Eiffel says, poking his head into the main room of the bridge.  “So… I didn’t know how to bring this up, but it’s still happening, so I thought you should probably maybe know… there’s a ghost in the comms room.”---The crew of the Hephaestus are a superstitious bunch... but, honestly, who can blame them?A series of linked, sometimes non-chronological, slice-of-life-ish vignettes about living on a station that's haunted, or maybe cursed, and plagued with mysterious happenings, time out of whack, crazy crewmates, a star that won't stop being weird, and maybe even... ALIENS???  (Nah, probably not.)---Completed!
Relationships: Doug Eiffel & Renée Minkowski, Sam Lambert & Isabel Lovelace
Comments: 112
Kudos: 72





	1. The Ghost in the Comms Room: Allegro

**Author's Note:**

> When you've been discussing the various different permutations of possibilities for Ghosts On The Hephaestus and want to write about your faves dealing with them.
> 
> Also I just love writing dialogue for Minkowski and Eiffel... and I really love Lovelace's crew and want to write them more...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiffel has a ghost problem.

“Uhhhhhhhhhh Commander?” Eiffel says, poking his head into the main room of the bridge. “So... I didn’t know how to bring this up, but it’s still happening, so I thought you should _probably_ maybe know... there’s a ghost in the comms room.”

Minkowski rubs her eyes, takes a very deep breath, lets out a very long sigh. She has spent the last hour and a half arguing with Hera over what should have been something very simple. She asked Hera to sort some of the navigational data; instead, Hera deleted it. Minkowski suspects it was either an absent-minded max-efficiency accident or else just a glitch and Hera is being very stubborn about it (“Well, the data isn’t _unsorted_ anymore, is it?”) and between trying to get Hera to explain what exactly happened and trying to recover the deleted data, it has been a very frustrating morning. “Now is really not the time, Eiffel.”

“Okay but I mean it though,” Eiffel says. “There’s a _presence_ in there. There’s a _guy_. When everything’s really quiet and boring and I’m starting to fall—I mean, just, when there’s nothing going on, I can _see_ him in the corner of my eye, he’s _glaring_ at me, he’s _mad_. Hera can’t ever see him and he isn’t there when you like, _look_ , and trust me it wigs me out big time, cause that sure isn’t Caspar in there and I don’t know what an angry ghost can actually do to me and I do _not_ intend to find out.”

It isn’t the weirdest excuse he’s ever tried, but it’s up there. “If you want points for creativity, you can have them. Now stop slacking off and get _back to your job._ ”

Eiffel’s eyes nearly bug out of his head. _“That’s what he says too!”_

“Good,” Minkowski says. “Then the comms room ghost is your new shift manager. Tell him hello for me and that I appreciate his work ethic when you walk back to your station, sit your butt down at the comms console, and get back to work.”

“Commander, I don’t think you’re understanding,” Eiffel says. “The comms room is _super haunted_ by a _vengeful spirit_ and I am _not going back in there_ because I don’t want to _die_.”

She doesn’t even know how to argue with this man. His logic operates on some inaccessible plane of existence. “Hera,” Minkowski says, “is there a ghost in the comms room?”

“Um,” Hera says. “I—I mean, I haven’t seen anything there.”

“Because ghosts don’t show up on sensors,” Eiffel says, like they’re missing something blindingly obvious. “Duh.”

“I _have_ seen Officer Eiffel... react... at nothing,” Hera offers. “That’s happened.”

“React how?”

“Sometimes Officer Eiffel seems to be... ah...”

“Hera. What are you trying not to say.”

“... dozing off at the c̵̨̧͈͙͚̗̦̋͒̅͋̽̈́̕͜͠o̶͙̳̮̹̗̒͂͊̏̽ͅmms console,” she finishes, sounding embarrassed. “And then sometimes he’ll get startled by nothing and shriek.”

“I don’t _shriek_ ,” Eiffel says. “I _scream_ , proper Lutz family style getting _haunted_ by a _ghost_.”

“When was the last time this happened, Eiffel?” Minkowski asks, because whether or not this is a real problem Eiffel seems determined to make it one.

“Um,” he says, and counts quickly on his fingers. “I think... ten days ago.”

“And it hasn’t happened since?”

“Well,” Eiffel says, “it only happens _in_ the comms room, and, uh, funny story, you will definitely get a kick out of this and not get mad, but I haven’t... exactly... set foot in the comms room since.”

_“What?”_

“I _tried!_ I _did!_ I was all set to be productive and whistle-while-you-work and everything this morning, the comms room looked empty and safe, but the moment I went inside I could _feel_ this aura of ghostly rage and decided nope! This is not how I am going to die today!”

“Have you _really_ not done any of your communications shifts for the last nine days?” Minkowski asks. “Wait—no, I fully believe that. Hera, were you aware of this?”

She hesitates for a few seconds. It’s clearly not a glitch. “... yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Snitches get stitches, Commander,” Hera says primly.

“I—what?” Minkowski whirls to face Eiffel. “Officer Eiffel, were you threatening Hera over this?”

“What? No! I never said that! I don’t know where she heard that!”

“I read _books,”_ Hera pouts. “I know things.”

“I—okay—this is ridiculous,” Minkowski says. “Eiffel, if you haven’t worked any comms shifts, what have you been _doing_ for the past nine days?”

“Things!” he insists. “Yesterday I spent all day helping Dr. Hilbert mix the new fertilizer in the greenhouse! Or, well, he was doing all the measurements and calculations and I was carrying bags of chemicals and scooping out whatever he told me to and dumping it into the various machines and whatnot. That was important!”

“And the day before that?”

He gives her a grin and _fingerguns_ , like he’s actually proud. “All those mandatory spacewalk hours that you were after me about a while ago!”

“Eiffel, you already did those.”

“Oh... ohhhhh right I did, didn’t I. Well. Now I’m _double_ certified. If you need anything done out in nice non-haunted space I’m your man.”

“... sure. And the day before that?”

“Uh, I think I spent that day... on... the observation deck? You know. Observing. For science.”

“For science.”

“Star’s still red,” he offers. “Very big, very red, very, round? And sometimes it goes oooOOOOOooooOOOOOOooo—” he waves his hands around his head, clearly confident he’s communicating _something_ — “and sometimes it goes like pwhhsssSHHHHHH—” he opens his hands and makes a big sweeping gesture with his right arm, indicating... a burst? a solar flare? Minkowski has absolutely no idea— “and sometimes it just kinda sits there going hrnnnmmmmmmmmmmm—”

“So what you’re telling me,” Minkowski says, cutting him off, “is that you’ve been avoiding both your job and me for the last nine days.”

“I wasn’t _avoiding_ you! I was doing very helpful and productive things... in places you happened to not be.”

“Some of them actually were helpful and productive!” Hera adds.

“I see,” Minkowski says. “Officer Eiffel, while you were doing all these productive things, what would happen if, say, last Thursday Mr. Cutter sent us a message on the pulse-beacon relay, wanting to talk to us about something he would insist was very important, and he has been waiting a whole week with no response?”

“Oh,” Eiffel says. “That would be... bad, wouldn't it.”

“Yes, Eiffel, that would be bad. Or, what if a ship en route to the _Hermes_ encountered a problem, got off course, and sent out a distress signal looking for somewhere to make an emergency landing, but no one ever answered?”

“That would... also be bad.”

“Two for two. Very good. And, what if, heaven forbid,” and she spreads her arms, palms up, imploring to the stars, “Darth Vader and his alien army came knocking at our radio-receiver door asking you to take them to your leader?”

“Aha,” Eiffel says, “trick question, Darth Vader isn’t an alien.”

Minkowski had sort of assumed everyone in Star Wars was an alien, or something. “Isn’t he?”

“Well, it all takes p̷̨̦͇͈͊̓l̶̡̩͉̞̻͓̦̖̫͚̗͘͜â̷̏̍͛ce in ‘a galaxy far, far away,’ right?” Hera says. “So they’d all be aliens, even the humans.”

Eiffel finally starts to look like he’s taking something seriously. “I guess, yeah, no one in Star Wars is from Earth, but when you say _alien_ you don’t really mean—”

 _“The point is_ ,” Minkowski says, “you are potentially putting us or others in danger by refusing to do _the job you were sent up here to do_. In case you haven’t noticed, we are a _very_ long way away from any other people. Keeping active and open communication lines is critical. Do I need to cite Pryce and Carter at you?”

“Noooo,” Eiffel says, “no need to get _that_ drastic, Commander.”

“Because _Pryce and Carter’s_ tip number 166—”

“We all know what it says!”

“Do we?”

“Yep! 

_“Do_ we?”

“We all super definitely know all the _Pryce and Carter’s_ tips and don’t need another recitation and lecture!”

“I’m so glad we’re on the same page then, Officer Eiffel, and _so_ glad you agree on the importance of maintaining a well-operating communications room with an alert and attentive communications officer actually in it.” She pats him on the shoulder. “And now I’m sure absolutely _nothing_ could stop you from returning to your very important post.”

“... right.”

“And,” she says, “as long as you _stay_ alert and attentive, and _awake_ , I’m sure no ghosts will bother you!” She smiles at him brightly. “Just something worth keeping in mind. Dismissed, Officer Eiffel.”

“Okay, but if you find me strangled by my own recording equipment, I just want you to know that it _was_ a ghost and it _was_ your fault.”

“I’m willing to take that chance. _Dismissed,_ Officer Eiffel.”

He finally sulks out. Minkowski goes back to trying to restore the lost navigational data. That should be the end of it.

* * *

And then at 1423 hours the composter in the greenhouse explodes, and it becomes a nonstop all-afternoon all-hands-on-deck emergency full of running, yelling (mostly from Minkowski), screaming (mostly from Eiffel), fire extinguishers, gas masks, creative epithets, evacuating baffling amounts of volatile chemicals, and directing every conscious thought towards clearing up this new and exciting disaster before all the oxygen ignites and causes their main source of breathable air to go up in flames.

(Eiffel showed up at the scene _suspiciously_ quickly for someone who was supposed to be all the way over in the comms room.)

By 1700 hours when Minkowski finally pulls off her mask and goggles, and watches singed pieces of her hair float gently away into the charred, shrapnel-shredded, and exhausted-looking tangle of plants, she’s pretty much forgotten about the ghost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pryce and Carter's tip #166 is "Communication is more important than courage." Minkowski is calling Eiffel a weenie who needs to go do his job already. Is that how that tip is supposed to be interpreted? Probably not!


	2. The Hephaestus Poltergeist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hui and Fourier ~~invent Buzzfeed Unsolved~~ search for the truth.

Lovelace pushes the door to the observation deck open. “All right, I’d like you to either reassure me that we’re _not_ all about to die or explain why you didn’t bother to _inform_ me that we’re all about to die, because—”

Dr. Hui and Dr. Fourier start and jerk away from each other, both looking vaguely guilty. Lovelace raises her eyebrows and is about to take a detour in being annoyed to give them a Stern Captainly Smirk of Knowing (they think they’re _so_ secret), but after a second realizes that it doesn’t make sense, they weren’t making out, because Fourier is clutching the object that seems to have been the focus of both their attention: a large, bulky camera with a microphone, flashlight, and shoulder mount cobbled to it with gaffer tape.

Some shenanigans are afoot.

Lovelace gestures at them. “Explain?”

“We’re not about to die...?” Hui says. “At least, not that I’m aware of. Not due to anything we can see from here.”

“Is there something wrong?” Fourier asks.

“You tell me.” Lovelace holds up the printouts she’s carrying. It’s a chart of something to do with the position of solar flares over time, showing a _massive_ increase in... whatever it’s actually measuring... four hours ago. “You just sent your weekly data over to me to sign off on. All of the readouts look normal except for this one. Is this something I should be worried about?”

Hui and Fourier peer down at it, then both go “ _Ohhhh_ ” at the same time.

“Right, that,” Fourier says. “That’s nothing, really it isn’t, that was just an accident.”

“An accident I should be worried about?”

“A recording accident,” Hui clarifies. “The sensor got bumped, that’s all. You see how the line stays stable until the jump, and then stays stable at the new level? The star didn’t change at all, just the position of the sensor.”

It’s the best possible explanation for what could have just as easily been a massive emergency. Lovelace smiles and relaxes a little. “Well, it’s always nice to hear that we’re _not_ on the brink of disaster for a change. Just be a little more careful around the equipment from now on, for my own stress levels if nothing else.”

“Oh, neither of _us_ bumped the sensor,” Hui says. “We’re _professionals_.”

“Yell at whoever was messing around here for me, then.”

Fourier won’t meet Lovelace’s eyes now but mutters, determinedly, “It was the poltergeist.”

Of course. Of course it couldn’t be that easy. “I’m sorry?” Lovelace says, in the tone that means she doesn’t particularly want to be patient.

“I’m sure I’ve mentioned it at some point,” Hui says, as if this is obvious and reasonable. “There’s definitely a poltergeist on this station.”

Fourier rushes to explain, “We all have noticed things across the station getting moved, going missing, getting broken, getting knocked over, showing up in unexpected places—”

“That just ends up _happening_ when you get six humans sharing the same small space and basic resources,” Lovelace says. “You don’t need a poltergeist for that.”

“Sometimes, sure,” Hui says. “My paperbacks have been _mysteriously_ vanishing and reappearing one by one even though _someone_ insists that they are garbage literature—”

“Which they are,” Fourier says.

“—but I suspect she _likes_ them anyway.”

“There’s no _inherent_ contradiction there,” Fourier says with a small grin. “One can imagine that they could be atrocious and yet _frustratingly_ compelling. Hypothetically, of course.”

“Of course.” Hui laughs. “Either way,” he says, back to the point, “this one, the one that bumped the sensor, wasn’t a human. We have proof. We have a _video_.”

“A video.” _Sure_ , Lovelace has spent her share of insomniac nights back on Earth flipping through the absolute dregs of 2 AM reality tv, but ghost videos are _never_ impressive. 

Fourier looks over at a wall console and says, “Rhea, sweetheart, can you play back that video again?”

There’s a downward-tone whistle from Rhea, one Lovelace recognizes by now as her expression of an exasperated sigh. _Really? Again?_ the words scroll across the console screen.

“The captain hasn’t seen it yet,” Fourier says.

Another whistled sigh but the console flickers to a high-angle video from Rhea’s perspective. Hui is visible in the frame, writing something in his blue notebook.

“All right,” Hui says, pointing at the screen. “This was at 1030 or so, no one but the two of us were here on the deck. There’s me, and you can’t see Victoire from this angle but she was—” he points off past the upper left corner, “—over there. The star of the show is _this_ sensor right here.” He points to a barely-recognizable piece of equipment that’s half cut off by the right edge of the screen. “And everything’s normal, and wait for it, wait for it... there!”

The thing _does_ appear to move. Maybe. The on-screen four-hours-ago Hui doesn’t seem to notice. It’s overall not very impressive. “Uh-huh,” Lovelace says. “Well, congratulations, guys, you went to space and found ghosts there, good work for the day.”

“Oh, we’re not done,” Hui says. “This is just the beginning. Now that we have _proof_ that it’s more than people just being too embarrassed to admit that they lost the geiger counter or knocked over Selberg’s special aluminum, this forms the centerpiece of our new _investigative documentary_.”

“Is this proof? Is it really?”

“‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,’” Fourier says. “That’s going to be the subtitle of the documentary, by the way.”

“The title is going to be ‘Space Ghosts With Victoire and Kuan’,” Hui says.

“A ghost hunting documentary,” Lovelace says. “Hence the camera.”

“Exactly.”

“Where did that camera come from? Do I want to know?”

Hui at least has the decency to look sheepish. “It’s not one of the important ones.”

Lovelace pinches the bridge of her nose. “Hui, please don’t disassemble my station from underneath me. It’s trying its hardest to do that on its own, it doesn’t need your help.”

 _I’m right here, you know,_ Rhea’s text blinks up on the screen again.

“No offense meant, Rhea, you’re doing great holding us together against the _Hephaestus’_ s best efforts.” She turns back to Hui and Fourier. “Are you guys _really_ that bored?”

“This is for _science_ ,” Hui says with an attempt at intense gravitas.

“We _are_ out here to discover the secrets of the universe,” Fourier adds.

“By turning off the lights and putting a green filter over your lens and crawling through the vents going ‘oooooh spirits, knock once if you’re here, twice if you’re not...’”

Hui hesitates, then glances at Fourier like he’s thinking, then sighs in defeat. “Okay, yeah, it’s a little ridiculous,” he admits. “That’s what Officer Lambert said too.”

“What?”

“We... asked him if we could use some of the recording equipment for the documentary and his response was basically ‘ _that’s_ stupid, _you’re_ stupid, you’re not allowed to do that because it’s a waste of time and it’s stupid.’ Not a direct quote, but, the gist.”

Fourier is staring at Hui. Rhea beeps in indignation.

Lovelace frowns. “Oh come on, you live here, it’s your life, you’re obviously allowed to do what you want. If you want to go look for ghosts, knock yourselves out. And if you _do_ knock yourselves out just know that I warned you against crawling around in the vents. It won’t end well.”

Hui salutes. “Yes _sir,_ thank you _sir_.”

“So... we do have your blessing to go on with our Hephaestus Poltergeist research?” Fourier asks.

“Just as long as you don’t get spooked by a shadow and break the camera. And you can get all that—” she waves at it— “junk off of it once you’re done. It is kind of an impressive mount though.”

“Yes sir! Thank you Captain!”

“And add a note next time you send over any data that makes it look like a solar flare is going to destroy us, okay?”

“Right!”

She waves as she turns around. “Have fun, you crazy kids. And tell Lambert that he has to lend you whatever recording equipment you want. My orders.”

* * *

After the door closes behind Lovelace, Fourier waits five silent seconds, then bursts into a fit of giggles and punches Hui in the arm. “ _Kuan_ you _lied_ to the _Captain!”_

“One tiny little lie!”

“We never asked Lambert _anything!”_

“But can you think of _any_ more effective way to get the Captain to sign off on it?” Hui counters with a conspiratorial grin. “There’s a very limited number of times that’s going to work before she catches on, better make the most of it.”

Fourier is trying to hide her laughter behind her hands and absolutely failing. “She is going to _keelhaul_ you.”

“I can make it not a lie!” Hui says. “Like so:” He activates his comm and says, innocently, “Hey, Officer Lambert, can I ask you something?”

“What’s wrong?” Lambert’s voice comes over the comm at once. “Dr. Hui? What happened?”

“Nothing’s wrong!” Hui says. “Why do you guys always think something’s wrong? I just wanted to ask if Dr. Fourier and I have permission to use valuable company time and delicate company property to ignore our work rotation and go make a frivolous ghost hunting tv show instead.”

“I—what? No! What?”

“Aw, okay, I understand,” Hui says. “Thanks, Officer Lambert,” and shuts off his comm. He turns to Fourier, shrugs, and says, “He said no.”

“He _did_ say no,” Fourier agrees.

“Not a lie anymore.”

“Yes, you have solved it, Dr. Hui,” Fourier says. “The true, ultimate dream of everyone who pursues astrophysics. You just discovered the secret of time travel.”

“Temporally-displaced truth! The discovery of the century!” He pauses. “Well, either that or proof that spooky incorporeal meddlesome spirits are 100% real, one or the other, they’re both the discovery of the century. Time travel _and_ ghostly apparitions, we’ll be _rolling_ in Nobel Prizes when we get back to Earth.”

Fourier’s eyes sparkle as she braces the camera against her shoulder and checks the view through the lens. “The laws of the universe unfolding, right here, just for us. Isn’t that a thought. So let’s go find a _poltergeist_. For _science_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it a ghost? Are the laws of physics wonky, just around this star? Is time going all slidey and it's just Eiffel knocking things over from the future?? Whoooo knooooows


	3. Hexes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The candy is cursed.

When Minkowski sits down at the mess table with her lunch, Eiffel is glaring daggers at Hilbert. Hilbert meets Eiffel’s eyes without blinking and slowly, deliberately, reaches into a small plastic pouch and eats a bright pink candy.

She looks from Eiffel, to Hilbert, back to Eiffel. “Do I want to know?”

“Hilbert’s eating the _hexes_ again,” Eiffel grumbles. His glower does not waver.

“Officer Eiffel thinks that the candies are haunted,” Hilbert says.

“They are not _haunted_. They are _cursed_. There’s a _difference._ ”

“The… hexes?” Minkowski asks. Then she squints at the thing in Hilbert’s hand, and looks down at her own plastic-sealed, freeze-dried Meal-Ready-to-Eat. “Wait, you mean the MRE desserts? That’s the issue at stake here?”

“Not _every_ MRE dessert,” Eiffel says. “Command likes to mix ‘em up, keep us on our toes, because why would they let us have anything so predictable as a lunch that won’t kill us?”

“Is there something wrong with the rations?” Minkowski asks, alarmed, because if Eiffel is right that _is_ bad.

“Yes!” Eiffel’s eyes light up; the Commander is listening, he’s _vindicated_. “So you know, besides the main meal part and the crackers and cheese packet, there’s also always a dessert, right? Some of them come with the little cookie, or the brownie thing that tastes like plastic, or the Hooah! bar. _Those_ are fine. Kinda gross, but fine. But the Hexes™”—and he points at the small brightly colored plastic packet Hilbert is eating from— “are _dangerous_ and I keep telling Hilbert to _stop eating them_.”

Minkowski pulls her MRE open. There’s something dried and lumpy and vacuum-sealed that insists it’s meatloaf and gravy, there’s the (vacuum-sealed) dense crumble-free cracker, the (vacuum-sealed) dried seaweed sheets, the awful cheese spread that Minkowski doubts has a single drop of real dairy product in it, a napkin, a plastic fork, and… there’s a cheery bright packet stamped with the Goddard Futuristics logo and the brand HEXES!™, displaying inside half a dozen brightly-colored, artificially-flavored, hexagonal-shaped, ostensibly-fruity gummy snacks.

She picks them up gingerly. “These?”

“I like them,” Hilbert says. “They taste of the idea of a fruit that does not exist in nature. Human ingenuity knows no bounds nor respect for creations of God.”

“They taste like Red Dye #40,” Eiffel says.

“I _like_ Red Dye #40.”

“What’s wrong with them?” Minkowski asks. “Is there an issue with the food storage? Are they contaminated?” They’re only six months into the mission; if their rations are going bad it’s _much_ more of an emergency than either of the two men are treating it.

“Yeah,” Eiffel says, “they’re contaminated with _bad juju._ ”

“Eiffel, you may not remember this, but you are the communications officer on this station, so I advise you to start _communicating_ right now. What are you _talking_ about?”

“Okay,” Eiffel says, “you have to have noticed how random emergencies keep happening here _all the time_ , for _no reason?_ ”

She hates to admit it, but it’s true. Minkowski has never been anywhere, on any base, in any craft, with as many issues as the _Hephaestus_. “What does that have to do with the Hexes™?”

“What do you think? It’s right there in the name! Oh _sure_ , hexagons are the most sci-fi shape, plausible deniability, but Goddard knows what they’re doing, and they’re _laughing_ at us.”

“ _Eiffel_ —”

“Remember when the hot-water valve burst our first week? I ate Hexes™ that day. Or the time I nearly sliced my fingers off in the blender? I ate Hexes™ that day too! Or that time when the greenhouse lighting went whack, the plants couldn’t photo- photosize- make air, and our oxygen got down to 14% before anyone noticed? You _definitely_ ate Hexes™ at some point during that, I remember you being crabby about it.” When she bristles at that, he quickly amends, “We were all crabby because we were all oxygen-starved and kinda dying, but the _point_ is, Hexes™ were a significant factor.”

“So you’re telling me that there is not, in fact, anything wrong with our food,” Minkowski says.

“Except that eating the Hexes™ is bad luck and causes bad things to happen _every time_ and Hilbert needs to stop!”

“You see what I must put up with to enjoy my lunch,” Hilbert says.

“Honestly,” Hera breaks in, “I don’t know how you eat things every day and _don’t_ get cursed. Eating seems like something that will _inevitably_ get you cursed.”

“Hera?”

“You’re taking pieces of dead animals and dead plants, and putting it into your bodies and _turning_ it into your bodies. You don’t know what’s in it or where it comes from and you mash it up with your protruding bones and absorb it anyway. You do that _every day._ It’s really pretty disgusting. And you _don’t_ worry about that?”

“We trust Goddard Futuristics not to intentionally poison us,” Eiffel says. “I’m not sure we _should,_ but we do.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Minkowski asks.

“All I’m saying is that from my perspective Officer Eiffel’s theory has merit. All these station disasters are very messy, very unpredictable, very… _biological_. I have total control over all the systems, so it only makes sense to entertain the possibility that _you’re_ the ones cursing us.”

“See?” Eiffel jabs his finger at the ceiling. “The smartest person on the station agrees with me!”

“Eiffel, you’re being ridiculous,” Minkowski says. “There’s no curse! It’s just _candy._ ”

“It’s _bad luck_ candy, and Hilbert just jinxed us because ‘ooh look et meee I’m un scienteest und I do not beeleeve in your seelly supersteetions’ and we’re gonna see a stupid, life-threatening disaster any minute now, just you—”

There’s a hiss and a crack and all the lights go out.

“—wait.”

“Hera?” Minkowski demands.

A crackle, then, “I’m here, I’m h̶̡̞̠̙͔͇̭̻̙̝̫͜͝ͅe̷̻̗͚̮̅̇̆͗̎̈́r̵͚̭͂̋̓̈́̚e̸͕̬̓͒,̵̨̺̫͓̯̅͜ ̵̨͔̙̟͔̥̝i̸̳͎̭͑́̔t̵̏͊'̷̡̭̞͔͔̩̝̑͜s̵͊́̌̊̿ͅ ̵̡̡͇̮̲̺̗̋̃͋̋̽̈͗͒̉͂̆͠f̴̻͆̎͂͛̆̉ine, there was a short in the electrical grid, lights are down in the starboard side of the station, engine’s fine, life support is… uh… okay you might want to go check on that soon. Really soon. I _think_ it’s fine but. You should check.”

Minkowski packs her food, uneaten, back into the plastic. “Great. Just great. Eiffel, let’s go.”

“Why _me?_ This is Hilbert’s fault!”

“You clearly don’t have anything better to do. Get up, we need to find the short.”

* * *

It takes almost an hour to track down where the issue is, and another forty minutes to fix it. Nothing crucial is down that Minkowski can see, it’s just a pain.

But she’s replacing a wire in one of the electrical substations when she stops, stares at her hands, and says, “God dammit,” very quietly.

Eiffel’s head whips around. “What happened? Did it break _more?_ ”

“No, it’s—nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

He crowds up next to her, straining to see. “Is it okay? What did you break?”

“It’s _nothing_ , Eiffel. It’s not about the wires, I have that under control. I was just… remembering something.”

“Oh.” He relaxes, floats slightly back, then, “Is it about the Hexes™?”

“No!” she shouts, a bit too quickly, then, at the _look_ he gives her, lets out a breath that’s closer to a growl than a sigh. “All right, yes. I was just—remember, three weeks ago, when you, for some unfathomably idiotic reason, decided to try swimming in the main water storage tank?”

“Oh. Yeah. The reason was it was my day off and I wanted to try swimming.”

“I stand by it: unfathomably idiotic. You almost _drowned_. But, when I was dragging you out, I remember thinking, _If I have to give him CPR and my breath still tastes like those sticky fruit snacks it’ll be his own damn fault.”_

“Ohhh _hhhhhh_ ,” Eiffel said. “See? _Hexes_ ™!”

“The Hexes™ are responsible for your own bad decisions?”

“Maybe that time they were! The evidence is _staggering_.”

“This might be a data point against. The fact that I _didn’t_ have to give you CPR means that disaster was, in fact, averted. On a few levels. By me.”

“Yeah, lucky for all those summers you were a high school lifeguard, right?” Eiffel says. “California girls: you’re undeniable.”

“Uh-huh,” Minkowski says. She twists the last new wire into place; the main lights blink back on. Another disaster averted. “So you’re saying, if we stop eating the Hexes™, you’ll stop acting like a brainless nuisance and start taking this mission seriously? Because _that_ is a trade-off I’d gladly make.”

“No promises! But it can’t _hurt_.” And as she closes and latches the metal door to the substation, Eiffel adds, “But c’mon, Minkowski, you have to admit, _this_ one wasn’t me. And I’m calling it now, next time someone eats the Hexes™ it’s going to cause a meteor to hit the station and we’re going to have to go full Armageddon up in here and there’s no _way_ you’ll be able to call that my fault.”

“And if the next disaster _is_ a meteor and not, say, you finding a way to get stuck inside the wall or blow up the microwave,” Minkowski says, packing up her toolkit, “then I’ll consider it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [this anecdote](https://coecretsquid.tumblr.com/post/158389494148/1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12) from Kelly "Coelasquid" Turnbull.
> 
> A couple of the _Hephaestus_ misadventures, and a lot of my perspective when writing the _Hephaestus_ crews, are inspired by some of the stories from [Biosphere 2](https://biosphere2.org/), which is an [absolutely fascinating place](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2) with an [absolutely bonkers history](https://getpocket.com/explore/item/eight-go-mad-in-arizona-how-a-lockdown-experiment-went-horribly-wrong?utm_source=pocket-newtab). [The people who went through the experiment it seem to look back fondly on it, though.](https://dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/articles/biosphere-2-what-really-happened) Apparently there's a new documentary out about it called _Spaceship Earth_ \- I intend to check it out, recommend anyone who's interested in what an eight-person crew living in an isolated deliberately-balanced sealed environment, growing their own food, doing science, mimicking life on a hypothetical Mars colony, is actually like!


	4. Accredited Institutions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everybody believes in _something_.

Lovelace drifts up to the scene of the embarrassment with some exasperation but more than a little amusement. “You two okay in there?”

“Oh,” Hui says faintly. He, Fourier, and the video camera are jammed at extremely uncomfortable-looking angles inside the far-too-small air vent. Fisher has already removed the grate cover and is working at some of the bolts holding the vent to the ceiling, but the two scientists won’t be getting out for a while. “Hey, Captain. Was… kind of hoping you wouldn’t find out about this.”

“Sorry,” Fourier whispers. “We got stuck.”

“Evidently. And, remind me, what _did_ I say about crawling around in the vents and getting spooked by a shadow? Why must I _always_ be right?”

“It wasn’t a shadow!” Fourier squeaks. “There was… there was _something!_ In the wall! We could see it moving just outside the vent, and it came at us, it tried to get to me, like it saw me, like it _knew_ me, and we… tried to escape down a side shaft. It was not one of our better ideas.”

“But we got it on video!” Hui says triumphantly, and despite the squish he and Fourier manage to high-five.

“Ahh,” Fisher says, as he gently tries to pry one side of the vent open. “Ran into the Thing in the Walls, did you? Should’a asked me before taking off into the vents, I would’a told you both to be on the lookout for it. It’s creepy, the first time you notice it, but it doesn’t bite. Well, hasn’t yet.”

“The _what_ now?” Lovelace asks. “How many ghosts, and monsters, and things that go bump in the night _are_ there on my station?”

“The Thing in the Walls,” Fisher says cheerfully as he works at the vent. “Don’t know what it is, but you can hear it moving around in there, sometimes. Too big to be a rat or a spider. And sounds like it’s got too many feet. But I figure, long as it doesn’t bother us, we don’t bother it, everyone’s happy.”

“... and _that_ isn’t ominous at all. So is the Thing in the Walls your poltergeist?”

“Could be,” Hui says. “Hey, Mace, can we interview you about this thing for the documentary?”

“Haven’t got much more to say about it than that, but, sure. So you’re for real about the ghost hunting, huh?”

A voice comes from behind them, nasally and appalled, “You’re _what?”_

Lovelace groans, Hui sighs “Oh, great,” and Fourier tries to turn to look and ends up banging her head on an exposed edge of metal. She winces, but waves her fingers _hello_ anyway. “Hi Selberg. Hi Lambert.”

Lovelace turns her head slightly to see Selberg, who she’d called for, heading down the hall, and Lambert, who she definitely hadn’t, scrambling after him. 

“What are you two _doing_ in there?” Lambert demands.

“You heard Fisher,” Hui says. “Ghost hunting.”

“Poltergeist hunting,” Fourier clarifies in a whisper.

“After—really? Why even bother to _ask?_ ”

Fourier shrugs apologetically and knocks into Hui’s head in the process.

“Selberg,” Lovelace says, “once they work their way out of there I want you to check them out, make sure they’re okay. Lambert, we’re good here, you can go.”

“How did this even _happen_ in the first place—”

“Officer Lambert, I said we are _good_ here and you can _go_.”

Lambert looks at Hui and Fourier in the vent, then at Lovelace, something in his expression clicking. “Did you authorize this?”

“I told them they could do the ghost conspiracy show if they wanted but they should probably stay out of the vents, they didn’t listen and karma got them good, we all learned a very important lesson here today, we don’t need you to stomp in and yell at anyone, and you can _go now._ ”

He doesn’t listen to her. No one listens to her, and yet she is always right. Funny how that works. “Captain, regardless of whether you believe it or not, there are _reasons_ for station protocols against frivolously authorizing things like this. We have these protocols—”

“And procedures,” she says.

“And procedures—”

“And manuals.”

“What will it take for you to take your responsibility here seriously? Dr. Hui and Dr. Fourier are _stuck_ in a _vent_ and Fourier is _bleeding_ from the _head!”_

Fourier starts sharply. “I’m what?”

Hui says, “You _are?_ ”

“You’re fine,” Fisher says, a quick reassurance. “You’re all right, it’s not bad.”

Lovelace cranes her neck and scoots herself upward slightly to see, and, oh, there _is_ blood beading in Fourier’s hair where she hit her head. “Oh. Okay, yes, a little bit, but _just_ a little! It’s fine, it is _really_ nothing to worry about, and anyway, that’s why I called Selberg.”

“And what happens _next_ time when the next person hits their eye? Or tears open their hand? What if it’s _infected?_ Was this worth it?”

“Hui and Fourier are adults who can make their own decisions, Lambert. I _did, in fact,_ warn them to stay out of the vents, but they wanted to go looking for ghosts, and who am I to stop them?”

“You are the _Captain!_ That’s who! You don’t even _believe_ in ghosts!”

“So?”

“All right, you two, there you go, should be able to get yourselves out now,” Fisher says, pulling back a vent panel and allowing a grateful Fourier to squirm her way out, trailing a swirl of blood behind her. Hui flexes the arm and shoulder that were pinned between the camera and the vent, like he’s trying to work feeling back into it, then crawls out after her. He straightens up and gives a quick salute to Lovelace. “And we didn’t even damage the camera, Captain. Well, don’t think so.”

“Good to hear. Get yourselves checked out first. I’ll get annoyed about the camera once I know you’re both in one piece.”

Selberg is already gently poking at Fourier’s scalp. “Is negligible,” he says after a few moments. “Wash with soap, then ice, tissue, pressure, that should be all you need.”

Hui drifts over to her. “You feeling okay?”

“Really, more embarrassed than hurt,” she says. “This… _was_ all a bit silly, wasn’t it.”

“Yeah, in hindsight, probably not one of our best ideas. But to be fair, we have lots of excellent ideas every day, so it’s a tough competition.”

“Is this going to be the end of it?” Lovelace asks. “Or do you still believe the Hephaestus has a ghost problem?”

“Oh, yes, that hasn’t changed,” Fourier says.

“There’s definitely a poltergeist at work,” Hui agrees.

“You’re _scientists!”_ Lambert says.

“It would be unscientific to ignore data you’ve collected yourself,” Fourier says, “and I have definitely seen ghosts before.”

“Ah, you have the advantage, coming from Europe,” Fisher says. “Full of ghosts, right?”

“It’s true. Everywhere has its own ghost story. It’s a very haunted continent.”

“It’s all the castles,” Hui says. “And the imperialism.”

“Those _do_ contribute, yes.”

“Polling our other resident European,” Lovelace says, “Selberg, can you confirm? Ghosts? Yea? Nay? Is this worth pursuing or should Hui and Fourier drop it so they don’t hit their heads on metal vents again?”

“Ghosts are not real as long as you don’t acknowledge them,” Selberg says.

A beat. “O...kay,” Lovelace says. “Selberg, how many ghosts are you ignoring?”

“All of them,” he answers, and does not elaborate.

“You’re _all_ scientists,” Lambert whines, his tone begging someone, _anyone_ , to agree with him.

 _There are weird readings from inside the station a lot,_ the text scrawls across Rhea’s wall console. _I don’t know if those are ghosts, though. A lot of this station equipment is not very good. That might be helping._

“Battle lines being drawn,” Lovelace says. “Besides, Lambert, aren’t you in the comms room all day trying to talk to aliens? You have no room to criticize anyone.”

“That’s different!”

“How, exactly?”

“It’s the _mission!”_

“Ah yes. The crucially important and definitely real alien mission.”

“It’s _scientific._ Statistically, there _has_ to be alien life in the universe, it’s _undeniable_ , that’s _different_ from looking for ghosts—”

“Well, yes, absolutely. But, statistically, how promising is that search either?” says Fourier. “Alien life must be out there in the universe, but we’re only 7.8 light-years away from Earth. We haven’t even left our own Solar neighborhood. _Statistically_ , we’re so unlikely to ever find it that looking is…”

“Mostly just a waste of time,” Hui supplies. “Not sure Goddard’s priorities are the best metrics here, because space is big. I have a degree in space so I can say this with reasonable confidence.”

“I was going to go with something more tactful, like _improbable,_ but yes. Space is big. The Fermi problem.”

“Ah, yes,” Selberg says. “The Fermi problem. Such as when Officer Julia Fermi kept snacks carelessly in the comms room and they attracted ants. No one knew where ants came from on spaceship. Was a problem.”

“I… sure,” Lovelace says, with the distinct feeling that this conversation is getting away from her.

Lambert, his pride wounded (and, worse, his sacred mission from Command questioned), isn’t waiting for her to wrestle the discussion back under control. “Dr. Hui, aren’t _you_ also out here chasing something that some might call equally _improbable?_ ”

“Hey,” Fisher tries, desperately, “we’re all doing our jobs here, mate, you and Hui and all of us have—”

“Oh,” Hui says, “I have plenty of evidence that psi-waves are real and have real effects on human physiology, the NSF just refuses to fund any serious research on the subject because they’re _cowards.”_

Rhea, always desperate to be included when the conversation starts moving too fast for anyone to bother reading the consoles anymore, whistles and beeps as her screen rapid-click rolls out _This station is buffeted by all sorts of strange radiation at all times that you probably don’t want to know about. I’m obligated to tell you but you don’t want to know. It could be what’s causing you to think you see ghosts. My sensors can’t pick up psi-waves but maybe those are the—_

“Guys!” Lovelace says. “ _Guys!_ We get it, none of us would be up here if there were any accredited institution that actually wanted us. We can all be big enough people to admit that. Lambert, step off, Hui’s doing cutting-edge nerd stuff, it’s great. Hui, the sooner you let this go the sooner Lambert can go back to his SETI lair and stop bothering all of us. Fisher, you’re an angel and we’re lucky to have you. No one is allowed in the vents anymore because you have all lost your vents privileges. Got it?”

Hui sighs and stretches his fingers, but nods. “Right. Yeah. Sorry, Captain.”

Lambert looks like he wants to keep arguing (Lambert _always_ wants to keep arguing, just let him try, she is more than ready) but Fisher puts a hand on his shoulder and so he just scowls but sighs too. “Please stop authorizing things like this, Captain. Station safety protocols 15.4-C through E—”

“No promises,” Lovelace says breezily. Some days, dealing with these people is like herding cats, she _swears_. “Hui, Fourier, I’ll be… interested… to see your finished ghost hunting show _that will definitely only be shot outside the vents._ Everyone else, as you were.” Hoping to drag the conversation away from clashing superstitious nonsense and head off any more arguments, she attempts, “Hey, Selberg, what was that about, uh, Julia Fermi? Friend of yours?”

Selberg, who has been actively trying to leave, looks uncomfortable at being stopped. “The communications officer on one of my previous missions to space.”

“Neat. Do you still keep in contact with the people you meet on missions?” It’s aggressively normal small talk, but it _is_ a question she wonders, sometimes. What is the future of this motley, exhausting, sometimes brilliant and sometimes just weird crew of hers, if they can all somehow figure out how to stop every conversation from turning into stupid drama like this?

“What, with Julia Fermi?” Selberg says. “No. She died. Was unfortunate.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear this chapter had a point when I started writing it.
> 
> Also, I didn't manage to work this into the chapter proper, tragically, but someday someone _is_ going to confront Lovelace with "If you're so non-superstitious... what's the deal with always asking Rhea when the Jets games are?" and she will have to finally cop to the mostly-joking-but-also-sorta-not family ritual that if anyone in her family doesn't wear some Jets gear on game day then the team will lose. Is that still true in space? Not risking it! Her brothers will never let her hear the end of it if the Jets lose three entire seasons cause she wasn't wearing the t-shirt they made her pack to space!!
> 
> Of course the Jets are probably gonna lose anyway but like, you know, at least it won't be _her_ fault.
> 
> (Lovelace is a Jets-Mets fan because I a Bostonian like her and thus refuse to assign her Giants-Yankees Fan on moral grounds.)


	5. The Ghost in the Comms Room: Adagio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eiffel has a ghost problem. Minkowski has a different problem.

“Uhhhhhhhhhh Commander?” Eiffel says, poking his head into the main room of the bridge. “So… I didn’t know how to bring this up, but it’s still happening, so I thought you should _probably_ maybe know… there’s a ghost in the comms room.”

After yesterday, Minkowski is _really_ not in the mood to return to this topic. She thought she’d made herself entirely clear on her stance, and she has other work to do. She checked the main bridge computer this morning to find all the navigation data back in place—still unsorted, but back in place. Over the night, Hera must have figured out how to restore it. Either grumpy or sheepish, Hera hasn’t _said_ anything about it, no apology or explanation, but she got the data back and that’s good enough for now. If Hera doesn’t want to talk about it Minkowski doesn’t need to press, as long as the problem is fixed. Instead, Minkowski has been spending the morning sorting the data by hand, figuring that, once again, if she wants something done right, the only way is to do it herself. It’s tedious, it’s going to take hours, she really shouldn’t _need_ to do this herself but clearly she does and God knows she has enough work to do already, so of course naturally Eiffel is refusing to let the ghost thing go.

“I _know_ , Eiffel,” she snaps.

“Okay but I seriously—wait. You _know?”_

“I’m not saying I _believe_ you,” Minkowski clarifies, “but yes, I am now aware of your ghost problem. My position hasn’t changed in the last twenty-four hours.”

“I—what? Commander! How long have you known about the ghost? And you didn’t say anything? You’ve just been _letting_ me sit there and get haunted?”

She rubs the bridge of her nose. “I only learned about it yesterday, Eiffel. I still _really_ think it would cease to be a problem if you stayed awake at your job.”

“How—Hera, did you tell her about the Ghost of the Comms Room?”

“No!” Hera says, indignantly.

“I _also_ still don’t like that you keep secrets from me about this station’s operations,” Minkowski says to Hera. “Next time Officer Eiffel fails to report to his job for more than a week, I want you to _tell_ me.”

“Wait—you know about that _too?_ ” Eiffel says. “I mean, not that I was avoiding my job or—uh—” Her glare says everything it needs to. “—okay maybe a _tiny_ little bit. But. Was it Hilbert? Is Hilbert the one narcing on me? I was _helping_ him in the greenhouse yesterday! Revolver Ocelot over there turns around and stabs me in the back when I thought he _wanted_ my help. And why does _he_ know about the Ghost of the Comms Room anyway?”

“It wasn’t Hilbert! Stop blaming everyone else! You _told_ me about the ghost yesterday!”

“... I did?”

“You did. We discussed your ghost at more length than the topic deserved.”

Eiffel, for once, is quiet, squinting and tilting his head sideways, thinking harder about this than she’s ever seen him think about anything. “... we did?”

“Yes, Eiffel! Have you forgotten _already?_ It’s been one day!”

“Oh, trust me, the amount of time that’s passed has exactly zero bearing on whether I’ll remember a given thing or not,” Eiffel says. “But… I know I was trying _wicked_ hard not to run into you yesterday, I _do_ remember ducking into a supply closet real quick when I saw you coming—”

“So you _were_ avoiding me!”

“—I mean, diving into a supply closet to get some _very important supplies for Hilbert_ at a time when you just _happened_ to _coincidentally_ be coming, but—”

“Eiffel!”

“—I really think I would probably remember if I _did_ see you? I’d remember if I told you about the ghost. The ghost has _kind_ of been on my mind lately. The ghost is the reason I was totally-definitely-not-avoiding-you in the first place.” He pauses. “I guess unless I was thinking so hard about what would happen if you caught me and I would have to explain about the ghost that I’m mixing that up with you actually catching me and having to tell you about the ghost. I _really_ told you about the ghost yesterday?”

“Yes. You did. How else would I know about it?” Minkowski asks. “I don’t exactly make a habit of going ghost-hunting. Or going in the comms room, for that matter. That place is a mess and stinks of fake cheese.”

“Cheetos are the perfume of the gods and you’re just jealous,” says Eiffel.

“I _guarantee_ you that they are not.”

“Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man,” Eiffel says. He tries to shrug, but it’s not as nonchalant as he’s attempting to make it. He’s still squinting off into the middle distance, like he’s trying to remember. “... so you’re _sure_ we talked about the ghost yesterday?”

“Yes! I’m sure!” Minkowski says. “Hera! You were there too, _please_ tell Officer Eiffel that we already discussed this.” She adds, and more bitterness probably slips into her voice than she intends it to, “He _listens_ to you.”

“Oh, um, well! I’m, not part of this debate,” Hera says, like she really _really_ was hoping to avoid having to participate in this conversation, “so, I’m not sure I’m the best one to—”

“Hera! He forgets things all the time!”

“It’s true,” Eiffel says.

“It’s not like telling him he forgot about this will be singularly crushing!”

“Yeah honestly I kind of rely on you guys to do the remembering of stuff because I know that I won’t.”

“That’s—nice,” Hera says, “but, uh, the pro̵̡͚͖͚̭̘̩̗͚̼̘̜͎͒̏̄b̶̛̞̜́̓̀̇̌͊͛̓͘͘͝ļ̶̙̫̜͋̾̑ẹ̵̛̜̰̳͈͍̼͚̈́̍̎͌̈́̎̓̉͗͑̓̚͜͝͝ͅm̵̝͐͛̇͊͗̎̆͐͒̕͝͠͠ is… it isn’t true. None of us talked about a ghost yesterday. At all.”

Minkowski says _“What?”_ at the same time Eiffel whoops “Hah! I knew it! I _knew_ I would’ve remembered if that happened!”

“I’m sorry, Commander Minkowski!” Hera says. “But Officer Eiffel _was_ avoiding you all day yesterday! Sorry Officer Eiffel. I can go through all the security footage I saved from yesterday, but the two of you didn’t interact at all, and I didn’t participate in any conversations about ghosts.”

“But—no,” Minkowski says, bewildered. “He came in here yesterday morning while I was trying to restore the navigation data that you deleted, and—”

“I didn’t delete any data!” Hera says. _“What?_ Why would you accuse me of that? I didn’t touch your data! Why would I delete your data?”

“And I spent all morning yesterday in the greenhouse helping Hilbert,” Eiffel says. “Where you _definitely_ weren’t.”

“No,” Minkowski says, “no, that was _two_ days ago, Eiffel. Yesterday we were _all_ in the greenhouse because likely due to your _help_ the composter exploded.”

Silence from both of them. Then, Hera says, sounding deeply concerned, “Commander, the composter is working fine, and has been since the mission began.”

“No, it—it blew up yesterday, we spent _all afternoon_ fighting the fire and fixing it, do you two—” Eiffel is staring at her. “—did both of you _really_ forget _all_ of yesterday?”

“Commander,” Eiffel says, “are you okay?”

“Yes!” she snaps. “Is this a prank? Is this your idea of a joke? Officer Eiffel, if you’re doing this to me because you think it’s _funny,_ I swear on your very _very_ short life that I’m going to—”

“It’s not a joke! I’m not—seriously, Commander, are you okay? Because _none of that happened!_ ” He’s not laughing at her; he seems like he’s getting genuinely nervous, like he’s also noticing that something is very wrong here.

Minkowski stares at him, then hits her personal comm. “Hilbert!”

“What?” Hilbert’s voice comes over the comm, gruff and impatient, like he’s being pulled away from his work. “Ah. Commander?”

“What happened in the greenhouse yesterday?” She’s talking too fast. She can’t sound afraid. She _can’t_ sound shrill.

“Officer Eiffel assisted me in mixing new fertilizer formula. Should compensate for decreased solar intensity, and hopefully will produce larger tomato yields—”

“I mean about the composter!”

“The… composter? Put much of dead plant matter and new nutrient mix in the composter. Why? Is there an issue?”

She cuts the call without a sign-off.

So that’s what this is. She’s finally done it. A year into the mission, dealing with these three people, seven-point-eight light-years from the rest of humanity, in this cramped little station, her mind is finally starting to crack.

“Commander?” Eiffel asks gingerly.

“Dismissed,” she snaps.

“But—”

_“Dismissed,_ Eiffel.”

“Commander, seriously, you look like you—”

_“Dismissed_ means _go away,_ Eiffel!”

And whether it’s her tone, or the expression on her face, or the knowledge that she has apparently hallucinated a whole day that didn’t happen, Eiffel doesn’t need to be told again. He bolts.

When he’s gone, she sags against the nav console, even though there’s no gravity and she doesn’t need to. She closes her eyes, grips her hair in her fists, and takes long, deep breaths until she can convince herself that in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t _that_ weird and everything is fine.

* * *

And then at 1423 hours the composter in the greenhouse explodes. Either the stellar radiation has made her psychic or the universe is mocking her specifically. After a year up here, after the day she just had, after Eiffel’s babble about ghosts, neither one seems as far-fetched as it should.

The firefighting and cleanup is a bit more streamlined, at least. Among the running and the screaming and the yelling, she knows which chemicals need to leave the greenhouse before they catch fire, which plant’s sap is boiling inside the trunk about to rain woody shrapnel down on Eiffel’s face and when to drag him out of the way.

By 1630 hours when Minkowski finally pulls off her mask and goggles and watches singed pieces of her hair float gently away into the charred, shrapnel-shredded, and exhausted-looking tangle of plants, she’s not sure _what_ to believe.

Eiffel is giving her a strange look. Hera starts like she wants to ask something, then stops, and studiously begins reading off damage reports as if that was what she’d been intending to do in the first place.

Minkowski tries to listen, tries to focus on the here and now, the crisis management and going forward, the things she’s good at, the things she understands.

* * *

That night she crawls, exhausted, into her sleeping bag, which by now feels like home. She reaches down, opens up the footlocker next to her bed, and pulls out her diary.

It’s something that’s hers, something in which she can be as candid as she wants to, a tiny piece of privacy on this station where privacy is nearly impossible. It’s a day-to-day record of her life and her thoughts for herself, separate from her official logs. She keeps it on paper, with a pen, because it’s the one thing she knows is unhackable and privacy means privacy from Goddard, too; she keeps it in Polish because there’s not much she uses Polish for anymore and it’s a comforting, personal indulgence. Also, from day one she hasn’t trusted Eiffel not to steal her diary, and look who’d been vindicated on _that_ front.

She turns to the next blank page, ready to finally complain about the frustration and bafflement and disorientation—not fear, not fear, she’s not afraid, she’s _not_ —that she’s been keeping suppressed all day. And, more than a little, wanting to read yesterday’s entry. Day 426. She remembers complaining about Eiffel and noting that the composter exploded. She _remembers_ writing that. But—

There’s no entry for yesterday at all. No pages torn out, nothing erased. It’s as if she never wrote one. As if it really never happened.

She stares at it for far too long. Then she takes a deep breath, makes a cursory note about the composter exploding, and puts it away, says “Good night, Hera,” and turns off the light.

She only lies there for about a minute before she flips the lights back on, pulls out the diary again, and adds one more line. _I’m worried that I’m losing my mind._

Then, on _that_ note, she goes to sleep.

* * *

And the next morning, when the nav data is unsorted and the composter is unexploded and Eiffel pokes his head into the main room of the bridge and says “Uhhhhhhhhhh Commander? So… I didn’t know how to bring this up, but it’s still happening, so I thought you should _probably_ maybe know…” she starts to suspect a new theory. 

It’s not one that makes her feel any better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I wrote this chapter the working title was "Minkowski and Eiffel accidentally gaslight each other" and honestly this bit was the impetus to actually write this whole fic.


	6. It's Not a Glitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hera notices an anomaly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who made it 5 whole weeks without forgetting to post! Incredible.

“Commander Minkowski,” Hera says, “if there was an anomaly in the engineering wing, you would want to know, wouldn’t you?”

Minkowski looks up from her spreadsheet where she’s setting the week’s work rotation. _“Is_ there an anomaly in the engineering wing?”

“Y̴̦͙͚̮̆̀̑̿̾͜͝͠ͅĕ̶̢̦͇͎͈̺̲̫͓̙͎̠͆̈́̿͒̆̾͋͗̏͋͗̄͝s̸̨̳̗̮͖̬̍͌̓̂͝,” Hera says, “I’m picking up an anomaly. In the engineering wing.”

An anomaly in engineering isn’t good. Hera’s hesitance about reporting it also isn’t good. Usually she’s able to give reports with the speed, specificity, and certainty that only a silicon brain can provide; the fact that she’s hedging and hesitant doesn’t inspire much confidence in Minkowski.

“What _kind_ of anomaly?” Minkowski asks, with practiced patience.

“An anomalous heat signature,” Hera says.

“Really? Is it anomalous?” Sarcasm gets the better of her.

“Ambient temperature in the ȩ̸͖̮̞͑ͅņ̶̱̥̗̤̱̤͔̈́̓͋̐͂̾̃ĝ̸͎̲̼ǐ̴̮̾̽̓͂͗n̷̻͇̫̻̱̩͍͋̄̌͋̌̂͆̿̓eering wing is normally stable at 20 degrees Celcius,” Hera says, sounding testy now. “In Engineering Hallway B about thirty meters from Junction 14 there’s a patch of warmer air closer to 35 degrees, approximately one hundred and ninety-six centimeters tall and seventy centimeters wide. It’s registering on infrared scans, but motion, electromagnetism, sound, and visual-light readings don’t report anything anom—unusual.”

“That’s… oddly specific,” Minkowski says. “Any idea what it is? Or is this a glitch in the infrared—”

 _“It’s not a glitch.”_ Hera snaps the words with a force that makes Minkowski double-take.

“... right,” Minkowski says. “Of course not. Is there an issue in temperature control, heat transfer, or air circulation?” Any of those would be worrying in the engineering wing. Any of those speak to a mechanical breakdown in something potentially crucial… or still a glitch on Hera’s part.

“All the systems check out and none are reporting malfunctions or unusual fluctuations,” Hera says. “If it were something simple and obvious I would have fixed it already. It must be a mechanical breakdown in engineering somewhere, but,” and her tone gets a little more forceful, “nothing is registering as broken.”

“Exciting,” Minkowski says drily. “Yet another thrilling mystery of the USS _Hephaestus.”_ She would love it if the station stopped having these fun little mysteries. She would love it so much, and she’s pretty sure the station knows that, because it adamantly refuses to comply in a way that almost feels like spite by now. “I’ll go take a look. Any issue in temperature control or heat dissipation is a problem, especially around machinery that’s already prone to breaking down.” She leaves the work rotation chart—she can come back to it, and it’s not markedly different from last week’s, and Eiffel never holds up his end, so she doesn’t know why she still bothers anyway. As she starts to head towards the engineering wing, she hits her comm. “Eiffel, you busy?”

“Uh!” he says. “Yes? Yes! Very!”

“Officer Eiffel, don’t lie to me.”

“... yeah not really, no.”

“Good. Well, not good, but—anyway. Meet me in engineering, immediately.”

“I didn’t do it!”

That was not what she was expecting. Somehow he never is, even though in retrospect she always should have expected it. “Didn’t do _what,_ Eiffel?”

“Uh. Whatever it is you’re mad about? In engineering? I want to state upfront that whatever it is I definitely didn’t do it.”

“It’s not something you did.” She pauses to reflect. “Unless it is, and you have a lot of explaining to do. Is it?”

“N...no? I don’t think so?”

“This isn’t a punishment, Eiffel. Hera alerted me to an anomaly, and I’m heading to investigate, and I want backup.” Bringing Eiffel into a situation where something is already going wrong is always a risk because it’s a 50/50 shot he’ll make it all go even _more_ wrong. But if a piece of machinery is overheating, or if heat transfer is failing somewhere, they may need it dealt with immediately, which will likely require more than two hands.

“Meet me in Hallway B, at Junction 14,” is what she says.

“Roger,” Eiffel responds, then before his comm shuts off she hears him say, “Hey Hera, where’s Hallway B—”

* * *

“Is this… it?” Minkowski asks.

She’s standing in Hallway B. Eiffel, who did manage to find the place eventually, hides behind her. He cranes over her shoulder to see what the anomaly is but very studiously keeps Minkowski between himself and it.

“That’s it,” Hera says.

The hallway is empty. There’s nothing to see.

“It’s still happening?” Minkowski asks, moving forward slowly, trying to feel for a temperature shift.

“It’s drifted slightly down the hall,” Hera says, “but there’s still a high-temperature patch with approximately the same dimensions.”

Odd. Not how she’d expect a heat-transfer breakdown to behave. Minkowski runs her hand along the metal-paneled wall, feeling for a sudden temperature uptick in the air or the metal where something is running hot.

“I’m not feeling any machinery overheating,” Minkowski says. “Can you tell where the heat is coming from?”

“Nothing in the machinery or the walls is reading abnormal,” Hera says. “Just that patch of air.”

“That doesn’t really make sense,” Minkowski says. “If the air is hot in just one place, the heat has to be coming from somewhere. Just one patch of air on its own can’t come from nowhere. Are you sure—”

“It’s _not̶̻̀̃ ̶̰̻̇a̸͖̫̓̿̓͋ ̸̙̠̤̽̍g̶̪͔͖̯͐l̸̘̈̓i̶̖̘͘t̸̗̒͘ch!”_

“Maybe it’s nothing,” Eiffel says hopefully. “Maybe it’s, I dunno, just a fart.”

“A fart,” Minkowski says.

“It _could_ be.”

“Do you have something to confess, Officer Eiffel?” Then she groans, and adds, “You haven’t been sneaking off to the engineering wing to try to propel yourself through zero-g with your farts, have you?”

“Commander!” Eiffel says. “I am _appalled_ you would even suggest that. If someone were to _hypothetically_ have tried such a thing, it would have been _ages_ ago, it would have been in the comms room, and it would have been a massive disappointment to learn that it doesn’t work.”

“In any case,” Hera says, “any heat in the air from a fart or anything else like it would have dissipated out in the air recirculation by now.”

 _Not if there’s a glitch,_ Minkowski thinks, but decides not to say. “I guess it’s true that air circulation has always been weird in this part of the station,” she says instead. “That might be contributing to the issue.”

“What?” Hera asks. “I’ve never noticed any problems here. Are there problems here?”

“It’s never been a _problem,”_ Minkowski says, “but in this set of hallways down in engineering, the air seems to circulate differently. I’m in here fixing things all the time, but I’ve never had to go chasing my tools when I put them down. Instead of just floating away, they always float… right back to me… when I need them…” She trails off, realizing how that sounds when she says it out loud.

Eiffel groans. “Great.”

“Eiffel, no.” Before he can say anything else, Minkowski says to Hera, “Am I getting close?”

“It’s right in front of you, Commander.”

Minkowski stops abruptly. “Wait, here?”

“Yes, can’t you—? Right, you can only see the red-through-violet part of the light spectrum. ‘Visible light’. It’s so human-centric. Yes, you’re standing right in front of the heat patch.”

Minkowski hesitates, then reaches out her hand and waves it in front of her. She doesn’t feel anything.

“It’s moving!” Hera says.

Minkowski gasps despite herself and yanks her hand back. Behind her, Eiffel makes a strangled yelping noise.

 _“Where’s it going?”_ Eiffel asks. “Is it coming towards us?”

“No,” Hera says, “Away—it’s moving down the hall now. It looks deliberate—”

Minkowski still can’t see anything in the hallway. No shimmer in the air, no movement at all. “Where?”

 _“Away,”_ Hera says. “Down the hall, looks like… towards airlock 3-B.”

Picking up the pace, Minkowski follows where Hera directs her. The two-meter patch of warm air is moving at a steady pace, Hera keeps her updated, Eiffel trails behind… she still doesn’t see _anything._ “Here?”

“It’s still moving,” Hera says. “It turned left—it’s definitely moving towards airlock 3-B.”

“Is the airlock sealed?” Minkowski asks, hurrying around the corner. “Is that the source of the circulation problems?”

“The airlock is reading normal. Fully sealed. No pressure changes or air leaks. No one has used it in…” Hera pauses, probably running through her logs and daily reports. “236 days.”

“But if the air is circulating towards it—”

“What do you want me to _d̸̲͉̮̠̘̔̓o̸̦̅̒̚͝?̴̧̛̥̹͋͗̒”_ Hera asks. “I’m giving you the information I have! Do you want me to list each of the four hundred and ten pings I’ve sent to the airlock today? I can, you know. It’s easy for me because it’s _what I do._ I ping every station exit every two minutes to make sure there isn’t a breach, _every day._ That’s the kind of thing they _sent_ me up here for! That is my job! And _still,_ no, don’t _know_ what’s causing this, I’ve run every diagnostic I have, that’s why I called _you!”_

“Hey,” Eiffel says, “hey, Hera, it’s okay, it’s not you. This station is, in the immortal words of Luke Skywalker, a piece of junk. Thanks for letting us know this is happening, right? Better to know than not know. Or, rather, better for the Commander to know than not know, I didn’t need to know this, but that was also not you, so.”

“I believe you,” Minkowski says to Hera. “I do. I’m just—I have to try to figure out what’s causing this. That’s _my_ job, that’s what they sent _me_ up here for. I’m not accusing you, I’m just trying to figure this out.”

There’s silence from the station speakers. Then, “I know that even if it isn’t my sensors acting up—and it’s _not_ —it’s still going to be some problem with the air circulation or heat regulation. Which are _also_ my job. You don’t have to patronize me, Commander. I know it’s some _glitch_ somewhere along the line.”

“Might not be,” Eiffel says. “Might be a ghost.”

“Eiffel,” Minkowski says, “don’t start.”

“If Hera doesn’t notice anything wrong in any of her systems—and you don’t, right, Hera—?”

“I can’t find anything, no. And I’ve been looking. _Believe_ me, I’ve been looking.”

“—so it’s not Hera,” Eiffel says. “And it’s not me because I never come down here and in fact try to make myself scarce every time you or Hilbert mention something that needs to be done in Engineering. So we’re down to three choices. Either you broke something at some point—which Hera would notice—or Hilbert did something—which you just have to yell at him till he admits to whatever weird experiment he’s been up to this time—or it’s something _else._ ”

“You don’t have to do this, Officer Eiffel,” Hera says, sounding resigned.

“Think about it logically. Commander,” Eiffel says. “Did you break something down here?”

“No!”

“Hera, where’s the hot flash now?”

“It stopped in front of the airlock,” she says. “It’s been hovering there for—oh wait. No. It just… moved into the airlock. Right through the metal door. And I don’t have any sensors _in_ the airlock. So… unless it reappears, it’s just… it’s gone.”

“Dissipated?” Minkowski asks.

“No. Dissipation looks different, you can see the infrared getting cooler and the heat patterns more dispersed. This… stayed basically consolidated, moved at the airlock door, and then just disappeared when it touched the metal.”

“Yeah,” Eiffel says. “Mysterious readings that don’t make sense? Check. Nothing broken or out of place except for one anomaly? Check. We can’t see it? Check. Walk through walls? What more do you want?” Eiffel points at Minkowski as if _she_ has anything to do with this. “It’s a ghost. That’s the only answer that fits. We’re chasing a ghost because of _course_ engineering is haunted _too.”_

“Not everything is a ghost!” Minkowski says. “It’s clearly some air-circulation issue! It’s not anyone’s _fault_ —” And even if it is, that’s not blame worth assigning right now because it will just derail things _further_ — “It’s just another issue that needs to get solved.”

“Why is this station so haunted,” Eiffel says, ignoring her. “Actually, scratch that, wrong question, why is _your_ Ghost of the Engineering Wing basically benign and even helpful while _my_ Ghost of the Comms Room was only ever mean to me?”

“I couldn’t see the Ghost in the Comms Room,” Hera says quietly.

“And I couldn’t see the Ghost in the Engineering Wing,” Eiffel says. “So we’re even. We’ve got each other’s ghost backs. Cover the whole ectoplasmic spectrum between us.”

“Maybe,” Hera says.

“It’s not a—” Minkowski begins, and then sighs in defeat. She is learning to choose her battles. This is not one worth choosing. “It’s… not something to worry about, if it’s gone now. Hera, let me know if it comes back, okay? Keep all the video if you record this kind of anomaly again, see if you can track where it originates from or cross-reference what systems are running when it happens. It might just be a piece of machinery that was never well-optimized even when they first installed it, which I wouldn’t put past them.” She leans against the airlock door. It’s as chilly as ever. “Thank you for letting me know.”

“Of course,” Hera says. For someone whose emotions are built to not allow her to be anything but chipper and friendly, she manages to sound very sullen. Minkowski could be impressed by that, maybe, but right now it’s not something she wants to deal with. 

She nods, then trudges back the way they came, still trailing her fingers along the walls as she goes to feel for any overheating wires or engines. Nothing. No heat buildup she can notice in the air, either. Hallway B is a constant, slightly chilly 20 degrees.

Eiffel follows behind her, still talking to Hera in a voice both upbeat and reassuring. “There’s all sorts of dumb ghost shenanigans that don’t make sense on Earth, why should space be any different? Oh man, did anyone die here while they were building this station? That’s why so many buildings are haunted, you know. Are we gonna find Jimmy Hoffa in the walls one of these days? Or are we built on top of an ancient alien graveyard—”

Maintaining crew morale is just as important as maintaining station integrity, Minkowski reminds herself. Pryce and Carter’s 742, after all. She takes a deep breath and lets it slide. Eiffel manages to finally draw Hera into speculating about ghosts too, and sounding a little less upset about it. So as long as Hera keeps checking all the machinery and nothing is spewing unexpected heat into the hallway, maybe she can let that be its own backhanded success.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I often find writing for Hera to be the hardest of the main cast so I try to make an effort to include her more! This one's for her. She's dealing with a lot.
> 
> Pryce and Carter's tip #742 is "It’s important for morale that your fellow crew members feel that you listen to them. Be open and give a fair shot to all feedback, suggestions, flirting, and bribes."
> 
> ["Ghost in the Machine"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25190248) was originally intended to be the big Hera-centric chapter right around here but it very much grew into its own thing.


	7. There Are Stories of the Dutchman, the Celeste, and Barnham's Pride...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lambert receives an unexpected radio signal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you may recognize this one from the [Welcome to Wolf 359 anthology zine](https://sites.google.com/view/welcome-to-wolf-359-zine/) \- and if not, I highly advise you go check it out, there's a whole lot of really fantastic art, fic, and comics there!

The call comes over her comm while Lovelace is trying to wrangle some important but uncooperative wires back into place. “Captain. I’m picking up a radio signal.”

She stuffs the zip-tied bundle into a containing bracket behind the wall panel. That’d be fine for now but it’s not actually fixed and Fisher will be annoyed if he finds it this messy. “Mmm, nah, alien reports need to wait for dinnertime, so we can all hear the thrilling ET news of the day together. Is this really necessary right now, Lambert?”

“The signal is coming _in_ right now,” he says. “I don’t _control_ what the receivers pick up or when, and I don’t _want_ to have this argument every time, believe it or not, but you _know_ it’s communications protocol 5-A that I have to inform you whenever we receive an anomalous signal on any of the search frequencies, and—”

She does know, unfortunately, because she has to hear this speech just about every other week. “Lambert, unless this is actually important—and _I_ get to define important, not you—so unless someone is literally dying, I don’t _care_ about every single time you pick up a reflection off some Goddard weather balloon. I’m busy right now.”

“Someone _might_ be literally dying!” he snaps. “Captain, I’m getting a distress call from a ship!”

Lovelace stops, the malfunctioning wires in the wall forgotten. “What?” Then, “What the hell, Lambert, why didn’t you _lead_ with that—”

“I _tried!_ I was _trying_ to tell you—”

“You were not, you were lecturing about comms protocol again—” This was stupid. She leaves the wires, leaves the removed wall panel floating in the hallway—sorry, Mace—and takes off towards the comms room. “Ugh. Never mind. Who is it? What happened?”

“I can’t tell yet, it’s faint, I’m trying to lock on and amplify the message, you should probably get—”

“Already on my way.”

Lovelace has gotten good at getting around the _Hephaestus_ fast. She’s still a little less good at stopping and still mostly relies on crashing into her destination, because, hey, it always works. She swings into the comms room without even needing to slow down, diverting her momentum with the grace and fluidity of a gymnast, and then crashes right into the back of Lambert’s chair with the grace and fluidity of a truck.

He doesn’t even _need_ a chair, really, there’s no gravity, but he’d been perched on the edge of it anyway, right hand on the bulky headset over one ear, left hand on a row of dials—until Lovelace stops herself abruptly on the back of his chair and he goes pitching face-first into the console.

_“Captain!”_

“Oops.” 

As he picks himself up and gives her a dirty look, she leans over his shoulder, ignoring the readouts on the console below and squinting through the polarized glass window. The star is out there. She doesn’t see anything else. “Who are they? _Where_ are they?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” says Lambert, huffily, sitting back down and readjusting his headset. “They’re broadcasting on a nonstandard frequency and I think they’re partially behind the star, so I can’t easily triangulate their location. But listen—”

He pulls out the headset’s cord, and a harsh crackle of static fills the room. Lovelace doesn’t know _what_ Lambert is hearing until a human voice starts to coalesce out of the noise. “ _This… please… need help… anyone…_ ”

She looks down, looks up, squints, tries to see _anything_. “How did they _get_ here…?” she asks, more to herself than to Lambert. Then, “Try to get a lock—”

“What do you think I’ve been _doing_ —”

“Sam, there’s someone in _danger_ out there, we _don’t_ have time for this. Do you know where they are?”

“The signal’s faint; I think they’re close but their broadcast equipment isn’t strong, and—something’s not right about this, Captain, I don’t understand, they’re not broadcasting on the emergency channel—”

“I hate to break this to you, Sam, but you are the _only_ person in this galaxy who, when the ship is _in distress_ , would stop to say ‘hm, better look up the _correct emergency channel_ in my _handy protocol manual_ before we do anything so dangerous as send a _distress call_ ’—”

“Every Goddard communications officer _knows_ and has _memorized_ the emergency frequency—and you’re the _Captain_ you should have _too_ —”

“They’re in _distress,_ maybe their comms officer is down for the count, you don’t know—”

The pained static hiss is slowly clearing, enough to hear “... _is Communications Officer Sierpinski of the USS Valkyrie, repeat, this… they’ve all… I don’t know… out, if anyone… please… need help..._ ”

They both freeze, their argument forgotten.

“The…” Lovelace says, leaving it hanging in the air, unable to be said without confirming what they’d both just heard.

“... _Valkyrie?_ ” Lambert finishes, sounding taken aback. “Was that anywhere _near_ here?”

“Was that even a real station?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I assumed it was just creative set dressing for Command’s fun deranged team-building exercise from hell. A made-up puzzle. It was _real?”_

“Mr. Cutter _did_ say it happened in the early 2000s,” Lambert says, “but it was never on the news…”

Lovelace snorts. “I can fully believe Goddard would do its best to keep an embarrassment like that out of the news.”

“They couldn’t! They—Captain, that would not only be incredibly illegal, it would—that’s _awful_ —”

The soft crackle from the comms console begins again, as if on a loop, “ _This is Communications Officer Sierpinski of the USS Valkyrie, repeat, this is Lucy Sierpin… all gone crazy, I don’t know how… anyone can hear us, please, we… please, if anyone’s there, we need help…”_

“Selberg’s been with Goddard for a long time,” Lovelace says, finally. “I bet he would—” She hits her comm before finishing that thought. “Dr. Selberg?”

“Yes, Captain?” he responds, from wherever he is.

“Was the _Valkyrie_ real?”

“The—the station USS _Valkyrie_? Yes. Why?”

“Wondering. Is what we saw in that VR box what happened to it? The mutiny, the bomb, everyone died?”

“We saw it as the internal Goddard memo reported it,” Selberg said. “I imagine that conclusion is correct, yes.”

“Any survivors?”

“None. Captain, why this sudden curiosity?”

“I’m a curious person. When exactly did this happen?”

A few moments of silence, Selberg apparently considering. “Smaller waypoint research station of the second-generation type, lost contact in 2002. In 2003 a survey shuttle found no trace. Assumed to have fallen into Jupiter. Never recovered.”

Lovelace and Lambert exchange a look. _Jupiter?_

“And no one survived,” Lovelace said.

“No. Captain, what is this about?”

“It’s…” The murmuring static takes a breath, the loop (and it has to be an automated broadcast loop, the cadence is the same each time) begins “ _This is Communications Officer Sierpinski of the USS Valkyrie, repeat, this is Lucy Sierpinski of the Valkyrie…_ ” 

“I’m… having an argument with Officer Lambert and I need to prove I’m right,” Lovelace says.

“Oh,” Selberg says, with audible exasperation. “Captain, please do not ask me to take sides in your and Officer Lambert’s squabbles.”

She’s a _little_ disgruntled that he buys the alibi so effortlessly. She’s been getting better about that, hasn’t she? “I won’t,” she says brightly. “You’ve been a great help, Selberg. Thanks.” And she cuts the comm, hopefully before he could hear anything incriminating.

“I don’t _squabble,_ ” Lambert grumbles.

“You absolutely do. _I_ don’t, though, because I’m always right.”

“You were _just_ wrong about the _Valkyrie!”_

“I don’t know _what_ to think about the _Valkyrie_ ,” Lovelace says, as the whispery, pleading, crackling loop continues to come in over the radio, _…Lucy Sierpinski of the Valkyrie… all gone crazy, I don't know how else to get a message out… anyone can hear us, please, we need help, please, if anyone’s there…_ “So please, Lambert, give me _something_ I can tell Selberg without sounding completely crazy.”

“The call is _not_ coming from the direction of our solar system,” Lambert says. “And it’s a short-range signal, it’s not strong enough to have made it seven-point-eight light-years. Whatever it is, it’s close, and it’s… moving… Captain, it’s moving around the star, I think I can get a location lock now—”

Whatever he does with the sliders and dials, the message, though still faint and choked with static, seems to come into focus. “ _This is Communications Officer Sierpinski of the USS Valkyrie, repeat, this is Lucy Sierpinski of the Valkyrie, they’ve all gone crazy, I don't know how else to get a message out, if anyone can hear us, please, we need help, please, if anyone’s there, we need help…_ ”

“Survivors?” Lovelace asks. “Could those be _survivors_ of the _Valkyrie_ out there?”

“It’s been eight years,” Lambert says. “How would they have gotten off the station, or be able to survive so long, or make it this far? _Why_ would they come this far? Earth is _much_ closer!”

“I don’t know, but we can’t just let them _drift_ out there! Can you reach them?”

Lambert hits a button, flicks the mic on, and says, “This is Communications Officer Lambert of the USS _Hephaestus_. We—we read you and can help. Um, requesting ship ID and damage report—”

He’s cut off by the beginning of the loop again, a dead, mechanized thing that apparently can’t hear him. “ _This is Communications Officer Sierpinski of the USS Valkyrie, repeat, this is Lucy Sierpinski…_ ”

Lovelace elbows Lambert aside, leans over the mic, and says, “This is Captain Isabel Lovelace of the _Hephaestus._ Survivors of the _Valkyrie_ , we’re here and we hear you, we can help you, you’ll be safe.”

For a very long several seconds, soft white noise and nothing else fills the room. Then, the same breath, the same cadence, the same broadcast begins again, “ _This is Communications Officer Sierpinski of the USS Valkyrie, repeat, this is Lucy Sierpinski of the Valkyrie_ …” and Lovelace sighs in frustration, _“... they’ve all gone crazy, I don't know how else to get a message out… please, we need help, please, Captain Lovelace, we need help._ ”

Silence.

“Did—” Lambert says. “Did that just—”

“There’s someone there,” Lovelace breathes. “Someone _heard_.”

“Captain, that—that’s not—that doesn’t make—”

“There’s someone _there_ ,” Lovelace insists. “You heard that. You _heard_ that, right?”

By the way his eyes are wide and he’s uncharacteristically at a loss for words, she is guessing that the answer is yes, he heard that.

“You can pinpoint their location?” she says, not waiting for an answer.

“I can now, yes—”

“ _This is Communications Officer Sierpinski of the USS Valkyrie, repeat, this is Lucy Sierpinski of the Valkyrie… they’ve all gone crazy, I don't know how else to get a message out, if you can hear us, please, we need help, please, Captain Lovelace, we need help…_ ”

Lovelace hits her comm. “Hui! Fourier! Anyone on the observation deck?”

“Ah—Captain?” She hears Fourier, nervously at attention. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine, we’re fine, just—can you point a telescope at something weird Lambert picked up here? I want a visual reading.”

“Something weird?” Fourier’s voice is edging on distress, and Lovelace only belatedly realizes how tense her own tone must be right now.

“We’re fine,” Lovelace says, slowing down and steadying, a captain in cool command. “Really. Nothing’s here to eat us, Fourier. We just picked up a signal and want to see what it’s coming from. Lambert’s got the coordinates at…” She tilts her head at him, prompting.

“Uh,” he says. “Cal-ICRF right ascension 87.3, declination 13.1, distance between oh-point-four and oh-point-six AU.” Lambert rattles off the coordinates, and there’s a soft exhale from Fourier that sounds like it goes with a nod, both of them made more comfortable with solid numbers in front of them.

“Right…” Fourier says. “At that distance…” There’s the sound of shuffling, a distracted breathy _bien, bien,_ then, “I see it, focusing, it’s…” A long pause. “Rhea, what is _that?_ ”

“What _is_ that?” Lovelace demands. “What are you seeing?”

“It’s… a ship,” Fourier says, bewildered. “No, smaller, more like a shuttle, I think. Some sort of short-range shuttle, derelict and drifting. Where did it come from…?” 

“An emergency evacuation shuttle?” Lambert asks.

“Maybe?”

“They had time to call an evacuation shuttle?” Lovelace asks.

“They might have had one,” Lambert says. “I… don’t know about more recent survey stations, but back when I was in high school at least, I know Goddard space stations all came equipped with them.”

“Nerd,” Lovelace says, then, “Wait, stations _used_ to all have emergency shuttles? Why don’t _we_ have an emergency shuttle?”

“I don’t _know!”_ Lambert says, and Fourier says, “ _Who?”_

The recording plays again, the same, always the same, same timing, same inflection, and yet somehow sounding increasingly desperate. “ _This is Communications Officer Sierpinski of the USS Valkyrie, repeat, this is Lucy Sierpinski of the Valkyrie… they’ve all gone crazy, I don't know how else to get a message out, I know you can hear us, please, we need help, please, Captain Lovelace, we need help…_ ”

“Fourier,” Lovelace says, “there are survivors of the USS _Valkyrie_ in there.”

A very long breath over the comm. A very long pause. Then, “Captain… I don’t… think so.”

“I don’t know how they made it this long and this far,” Lovelace says, “but we’re getting a distress call from them. They need help.”

“Captain,” Fourier says, her voice wobbly, “there is no one alive on that shuttle.”

“Well there’s _somebody_ out there talking to me!”

“Captain, it’s…” Fourier says, then changes her mind. “Rhea, can you show the telescope images in the comms room?”

The central screen on the comms console flickers from numerical readouts to an image, refreshing three times a second, and—oh.

“Oh,” Lovelace says, out loud, because she needs to say something.

“Oh,” Lambert agrees faintly.

It does look like a short-range shuttle, barely more than a capsule, not something that could ever make it outside the solar system even on a good day. And it’s not a good day for the little ship.

The hull is twisted and cracked, the back end little more than melted slag torn open to the void. If she squints, Lovelace can see the grainy details of the shuttle’s interior. The glass of the windows is blown out, or maybe collapsed in. But on the side, still mostly legible, are the words _Valkyrie-A_ , pathetic against the charred gray metal.

“It… _is_ consistent with what we know,” Fourier says, hesitating, like she’s waiting and poised to reëvaluate if Lovelace chooses to give whatever evidence is causing her to be this insistent. “The bomb that broke open the _Valkyrie_ must have caught this shuttle in the heat and shockwave. Which I suppose then… propelled it… here. Somehow.”

Lovelace looks out the window, open onto the softly churning red star and the empty depths of space beyond. She can’t see anything out there. The shattered shuttle on the screen drifts against the black, cold and dark and dead.

With the tips of her fingers, she presses down on the microphone call button. “Lucy Sierpinski,” Lovelace says. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”

“ _This is Communications Officer Sierpinski of the USS Valkyrie,”_ the radio whispers. The static crackle is starting to overtake the signal again, the clarity degrading. Still, it feels like an answer. Feels like a yes. _“Repeat, this is Lucy Sierpinski of the Valkyrie… they’ve all gone crazy, I don't know how else to get a message out, I know you can hear us, please, we need help, please, Captain Lovelace, we need help.”_

“Captain,” Lambert says, “I think it… it must be automated. She didn’t make it off the station.”

_“This is Communications Officer Sierpinski of the USS Valkyrie, repeat, this is Lucy Sierpinski of the Valkyrie…”_

The telescope must be locked on and tracking, because the broken little craft remains centered as slowly, excruciatingly slowly, it continues on its course away. She can see it turning on the screen, exposing the ruptured stern, the empty and unlit interior, bathed only in the harsh red light of the star.

_They’ve all gone crazy, I don't know how else to get a message out…_

It’s getting fainter. Losing the signal into the noise. Moving away from them, into the dark. But the loop is still playing, and Lovelace can still pick out the now-familiar phrases, rhythms of speech coming through where words are starting to get lost.

_… I know you can hear us, please, we need help, please, Captain Lovelace, we need help._

Lovelace takes a deep breath and makes a decision. “If this is a prank by Command, some new team-building test, I am going to be _very_ pissed.”

She’s not sure if she believes it. But by the way Lambert’s knuckles are turning white where he’s gripping the headset, by the way Fourier keeps taking a breath like she wants to ask something and then strangling it back— _they_ need something to believe, and as the captain it’s her job to step forward and provide them something that makes sense.

And she can pretend to believe it. Take the lead, defuse the tension—and then do a diagnostics run and check-up on the structural integrity of her own station, just to be sure. And, okay, maybe be a little gentler on her own crew, because they’re alive, and good people, and not mutinous or murderous, and they deserve it… and forget about this, and move on.

Pretend she doesn’t hear the fading pleas of a long-dead woman through the static.

_I know you can hear us, please, we need help, please, Captain Lovelace, we need help._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title and inspiration come from ["Dawson's Christian"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w34fSnJNP-4) by Duane Elms, performed here by Vic Tyler. [This one](https://vixyandtony.bandcamp.com/track/dawson-s-christian) is another fantastic rendition by Vixy and Tony. If you like Space Ghosts I _highly_ recommend a listen.


	8. The Ghost in the Comms Room: Minuet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Minkowski deals with her time loop problem (again, and again, and again).

In the morning, the navigational data is unsorted.

* * *

“Uhhhhhhhhhh Commander?” Eiffel says, poking his head into the main room of the bridge. “So… I didn’t know how to bring this up, but it’s still happening, so I thought you should _probably_ maybe know… there’s a ghost in the comms room.”

* * *

At 1423 hours, the composter explodes.

* * *

In the morning, the navigational data is unsorted.

“Hera, what day is it?” Minkowski asks, hoping this is a uniquely terrible dream, and knowing that her bad dreams never manifest like this.

“It’s day 426, Commander,” Hera says. “July 23. Wednesday.”

“Right.”

“Is… something supposed to happen today?” Hera hazards. “You usually know what day it is.”

There is absolutely nothing she can do except get through the day and hope this goes away tonight. She ignores the fact that it has not gone away for the past four nights. “I’m just feeling a bit out of it today. That’s all.”

“Is this something I should alert Dr. Hilbert about?”

“I don’t think so.” She cracks her knuckles. “I’m not sure Dr. Hilbert can help. But if you record any… unusual fluctuations in the star, gravity, radiation, _anything,_ let me know, all right?”

“Of course, Commander.” She pauses. “Are you… _expecting_ unusual fluctuations in the star? Is something going on?”

“I don’t know what to expect,” Minkowski says, which, when she reflects on it, is a complete lie.

* * *

“Uhhhhhhhhhh Commander?” Eiffel says, poking his head into the main room of the bridge. “So… I didn’t know how to bring this up, but it’s still happening, so I thought you should _probably_ maybe know—”

She finishes the line with him, not even looking up from the console. “There’s a ghost in the comms room.”

“Wait,” Eiffel says, taken aback, “you _know_ about the ghost?”

“It’s my station, Eiffel,” Minkowski says. “I know everything that happens on it.” She looks up now, stares him dead in the eye. She has no patience for this today. “Including that _you’ve_ been shirking your duties for nine days.”

“How—”

“I told you. It’s my station. I know everything. Get back to work, Eiffel, I don’t care what the ghost says. In fact, _listen_ to what the ghost says, he seems to have more dedication to getting your job done than you do.”

“Commander—”

“ _Get_ , Eiffel.”

She can feel something harsh and wild in her eyes. Whatever he sees, Eiffel gives a whimpering nod and scrambles to leave.

* * *

“You were right,” Hera says. “The star is putting out… unusual gravity waves? That shouldn’t be possible.”

Minkowski is only vaguely aware of what gravity waves are, but it sounds bad. “Is it a threat to our orbit or gyroscopic controls?” she asks, because addressing her personal theory needs to take a backseat to keeping the station from falling out of the sky.

“No, they’re easy enough to adjust for without straining the engines. It’s new, though, it wasn’t happening yesterday. Can you feel them? Can humans feel those?”

“Maybe,” Minkowski says. “I’m feeling… something. That might be it.”

* * *

Minkowski shows up at the greenhouse at 1400 hours with a fire extinguisher and a set of protective gear. She has moved most of the volatile chemicals safely out of harm’s way by the time the composter explodes.

* * *

She stays awake all night. Pacing the bridge and staring at the faintly luminous numbers ticking minute by minute on the nav console, she tries to stay sharp, to see when time resets and what happens. She’s hoping that if she can stay up all the way through into tomorrow, then tomorrow will actually come. If she can push her way through to the other side, then time will settle on the right course again. Like holding her breath to force hiccups to settle.

The last number she remembers registering is 0312 before she finds herself waking up in her own quarters.

* * *

It’s day 426. The nav data is unsorted. There’s a ghost in the comms room. At 1423 hours, the composter explodes.

* * *

“This is Lieutenant Commander Renée Minkowski of the USS _Hephaestus_ station, reporting an anomalous effect of the star Wolf 359,” Minkowski says into the mic. Her voice is steady and her tone stays professional. She spent more than an hour composing this message in her head. If she’s going to run to Command for help, she is _not_ going to come off as an incompetent panicky mess who’s losing her mind. “Our station mother program, Hera, has recorded some unusual gravitational fluctuations, and the human crew are reporting unusual temporal effects.” She _is_ human crew and she _is_ reporting unusual temporal effects, to her diary stubbornly every night at least, even though her writing never makes it to the morning. “I suspect the stellar effects are adversely… affecting…” Dammit. Too late now, though, keep going— “the crew’s mental and perceptual stability. Requesting instructions.”

She signs off, broadcasts the message out towards the _Hermes,_ and leans back in the comms chair. It’s not quite ten in the morning and she’s already exhausted.

The comms room is quiet. She knew it would be, knew she’d have the place to herself all day if she wanted because certainly Eiffel won’t be here. But she wanted to get this message out in the morning, let it zip from the specialized broadcast equipment along light-arcs through the vacuum towards the _Hermes._ It’s not quite ten in the morning on day 426 which means the message has a little over seventeen hours to be on its way. Travelling at the speed of light, her words will be eleven billion miles away by the time the day resets. Maybe, if the effect is localized to Wolf 359’s gravitational reach, her message will escape.

But if this keeps up she’s not sure she could ever get a message back.

Minkowski sighs and stands up. She’s not going to sit here and dwell. Temporal anomaly or not, she has a station to run.

She pauses in the doorway, though, and turns to look back. The only movement in the cluttered little space is the slow wafting of Cheeto dust in the recycling air. The only sound is the gentle white noise from the radio. She doesn’t see any ghost, doesn’t feel any presence. There’s nothing here. Of course there’s nothing here.

“Are you doing this?” she asks the empty comms room.

The radio on the console crackles a little. _“You doing this?”_ it returns her words, her own voice, back to her.

It’s a simple effect of the unreliable, second-tier, constantly-malfunctioning equipment they were given. That’s all it is. This isn’t that weird, in the grand scheme of _Hephaestus_ glitches. There is absolutely no reason to be afraid.

Minkowski exits the comms room very fast.

* * *

It’s day 426.

* * *

“Uhhhhhhhhhh Commander?” Eiffel says, poking his head into the main room of the bridge, and bumps right into Minkowski, who is standing there, arms folded, waiting for him. “Wait am I in trouble, or—”

“You thought I should _probably_ maybe know there’s a ghost in the comms room,” Minkowski says. “That’s what you were coming here to tell me, right?”

“That’s—yeah, exactly. How did you know?” His eyes go wide. “Can you read minds now? Did the star give you the power to read minds? Is this our superhero origin story unfolding in real time? Am _I_ gonna get cool powers—”

“Eiffel! No superpowers. That’s ridiculous. I’m stuck in a time loop.”

There is an uncomfortably long pause as he stares at her, waiting for the rest of it, whatever this is.

Nothing else is forthcoming, because she has nothing else to explain it. That’s it. That’s what’s happening here and she’s finally said it out loud.

“... right,” Eiffel says. “Which is much less ridiculous.”

“Eiffel, I’m not joking. You were coming in here to tell me that you haven’t been in the comms room for nine days because there’s a ghost there, who gets mad at you and tells you to go back to work when you fall asleep at your console.”

“I—you know all that?”

“I _told_ you,” she says, because this morning is the—eighth? ninth? has she really been at this for more than a week now?—and she has resolved that if Eiffel believes in ghosts, he’s likely enough to believe in time loops. There’s nothing else to call what’s happening, besides the persistent fear that she has, indeed, just snapped. “This is the eighth or ninth day I’ve lived through Day 426. It’s always Day 426. Over and over, and I don’t know _why._ ”

“This is a joke,” Eiffel says. “You’re playing a joke on me, right?”

“Do I _joke_ about things like this _,_ Officer Eiffel?”

“... no, you don’t. You hate jokes.”

“I don’t—I’m fine with the concept of jokes! I hate _your_ jokes.”

“Ouch,” Eiffel says. “Low blow, Commander. But—this isn’t some test? Some, I dunno, Command scenario where they test what you would do if something really improbable happened? Try to catch us unaware? You’re really stuck in a time loop?”

“Eiffel, I cannot emphasize enough how much this is not a test and how much I am actually stuck in a time loop.”

“That’s… freaky,” Eiffel says. “Do you… tell me every time, and I always forget, or…?”

“No,” Minkowski says. “I mean, yes, you always forget when the day resets, but I’ve never told you about it before. This… this is the first time.” It’s been happening for more than a week. Nothing sticks. Nothing changes. She needs to tell _somebody_ or she feels like she’ll explode.

“Huh,” is all Eiffel has to say.

“That’s it?”

“That’s what? What do you want me to say? ‘Oh my God, time travel!’ feels a little obvious, but I’m not coming up with much more than that!”

“Isn’t there some movie about this? I expected you to be unable to contain all your references.”

“Maybe? This happened in Star Trek,” he offers. “The episode with Frasier. From _Frasier._ ”

“Thanks.” She rubs her eyes. She’s feeling stupider by the minute and wishes she hadn’t said anything. “Could this have anything to do with your comms room ghost?”

“The ghost? How could it? The Ghost of the Comms Room is just a ghost, and obviously ghosts can’t do time travel.”

“All I know is you came to me complaining about a ghost, and then time stopped moving forward,” Minkowski says. “It could be—Hera, you’re recording unusual gravitational fluctuations, right?”

“What?” Hera asks. “I’m not—” She goes silent for six seconds, which, Minkowski knows, is a very long time in computer years. “I _am_ recording unusual gravitational fluctuations. Or, I don’t know how unusual they really are for Wolf 359, because it does unusual fluctuations of all sorts of things constantly, but I’ve never seen this particular type before. How did you know about that?”

“Can they give us superpowers?” Eiffel asks.

“I don’t think so, Officer Eiffel.”

“I _told_ you,” Minkowski says. “I’m stuck in—or, no. How about this. I think the star is affecting our brains somehow. Our perceptions. You’re seeing a ghost. I’m seeing a day keep repeating. I’m sure if we ask Hilbert he’s seeing strange things too, but won’t say anything unless prompted.” It feels like a weak theory. Any gravitational effects strong enough to bend space-time like this should have killed them days ago, and this is a bit _much_ for a mere hallucination. She doesn’t think it works this way. But, crucially, she doesn’t _know_.

“Oh, I’ve seen the ghost way before this,” Eiffel says. “That’s not exactly _new._ And besides, let’s be real here, Commander, if the Ghost of the Comms Room had any freaky let’s-do-the-time-warp-again powers he could use to drive someone crazy cause he was mad at them, he’d do it to _me,_ not you.”

“You know what?” Minkowski says, regretting this whole conversation, “You’re entirely right. Thank you, Eiffel, you have been, as always, an _immense_ help.”

* * *

At 1340 she calls Eiffel and Hilbert to the greenhouse.

“The composter is going to explode,” she says, handing them both gas masks. “Get anything crucial or flammable out of its way for the next forty minutes, and then be on hand with fire extinguishers at 1420 hours.”

“What is wrong with the composter?” Hilbert asks, at the same time as Eiffel says, “What’s 1420 hours again?”

She decides to answer one of these. “Eiffel, how long have you been living on this station?” (It’s a rhetorical question. The answer is 426 days.) “We’ve always used 24-hour time.”

“Yeah but that requires doing math in my head every time you say anything. I always just ask Hera to translate it into real-people time. Hera?”

“The real-people time is 1406082000,” Hera says.

“Thanks, babe. So, what time is it now?”

“Eiffel, this—never mind!” Minkowski snaps. “We’re on a space station, clock-time is arbitrary, we have forty minutes before the greenhouse that makes all of our oxygen goes up in flames, so let’s _go._ ”

Under her direction, they’re extremely efficient. Everything gets moved out, the space around the composter is cleared, they’re standing by with fire extinguishers at the ready, Hilbert’s objections that his fertilizer experiment was perfectly safe are shot down, and at 1423 hours the composter explodes.

By 1500 the fire is put out and nearly all of the plants have been saved. Minkowski pulls off her mask and goggles and only a single curl of singed hair floats gently away into the plants. She’s proud. She’s got this down.

Eiffel takes off his own mask, hesitantly following her lead. “So, uh, is that it for the weird disasters that happen today, or—”

He yelps and sends his mask flying when Minkowski smacks her forehead and yells, “ _Aughh!”_

“Commander, what—?”

“What else is there?” Hilbert demands.

“I just remembered,” Minkowski says. “I can’t believe—I think I ate the Hexes™ yesterday.”

Judging by the look of dawning horror on Eiffel’s face, he suddenly understands everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was probably the most fun chapter to write. I love... time loops.


	9. Fisher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhea notices an anomaly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhh so this one ended up being a 100% angstfest. I guess when I set out to write "ghosts" and "Lovelace's crew" we were gonna end up here eventually.

_Captain,_ Rhea whistles, a two-note tone Lovelace recognizes as her own title without looking at the wall console. There’s a hesitation, then a soft continuation of clicks and beeps. 

Lovelace sighs, and lifts her head from where it’s been resting in her hand for… a minute? Five minutes? Ten? Time is especially slippery, these days. “What?” she asks, turning to see the console on the other side of her bed.

Rhea has left her text sitting on the screen, waiting for Lovelace to read it. _I can tell that now isn’t a very good time to talk to you about something like this and I’m sorry. But I’m obligated to inform you. I’m picking up an anomaly in the engineering wing._

Lovelace stretches her shoulders, rolling them back to try to get the stiffness out. She just wants to flex her left arm, too, but it’s still in the rigid cast and it _shouldn’t_ move because it’s still _healing_ but the only emotion she can feel is the itchy, crusty feeling on her skin that makes her want to stretch out her arm _now_. Maybe her brain is focusing on this particular sensation at the aggravating exclusion of all else as a way to shield her from what actually hurts. Maybe everything has just shot her brain to hell and it’s flailing for something to land its focus on.

Either way, it takes a long time for Lovelace to come up with a response. “What kind of anomaly?” she finally says, which is probably the right one, or at least one that puts off having to make a decision for another few seconds.

Rhea hesitates. _An anomalous signature across the infrared-ultraviolet parts of the electromagnetic spectrum._

Anomalous heat and visual readings, Lovelace translates in her head, dully. “Okay,” she says. She blinks hard, tries to focus her eyes. “Is something breaking? Overheating?” This station has never functioned smoothly, and has only gotten worse with no dedicated engineer anymore.

Then again, a straightforward mechanical problem to fix might be a nice change of pace. Something to do. Something practical and present to think about.

Another hesitation from Rhea. That isn’t good. She doesn’t normally do this. “Rhea?”

 _It’s Officer Fisher,_ Rhea ticker-tapes in a tone of whistles that sounds soft and scared. _I can see Officer Fisher in the engineering wing._

It takes a second for Lovelace to realize what this means. “What?”

_He doesn’t respond when I try to get his attention. And motion and pressure sensors aren’t registering anything where he is. But—_

Lovelace doesn’t wait to see where that sentence is going. She’s already turned around, scrambled to her magnetized storage drawers and pulled out her comm. “Fisher?” she says. “Fisher, are you there?”

There’s no response, and she feels extremely stupid, but her heart is still beating very fast.

 _He won’t respond when I try to get his attention,_ Rhea has repeated by the time Lovelace looks back over at her console.

“Show me what you’re seeing,” Lovelace says.

The console flickers, and the text replaces itself with high-angle footage of one of the engineering hallways. And… that’s Mace Fisher. There’s no sound, but he looks like he’s whistling as he works on one of the cable bundles like he’s done a million times before.

Lovelace’s mouth is dry and her head feels light. “And that’s not recorded footage.”

Rhea beeps a simple, blunt sound. She doesn’t even bother to put the text on the screen. Lovelace recognizes _No._

“That’s happening right now. That’s real-time.”

A rising tone, this one _Yes._

“What… what’s _happening,_ Rhea?”

The image finally disappears. _I don’t know, Captain. I’m running all my diagnostics and refreshing my cameras and it keeps returning Officer Fisher._

She feels detached. Like being trapped in a nightmare and knowing it’s not real, but having to act like it is anyway. Lovelace gets up. There’s only one thing she can do, after all. “I’m going to go see,” she tells Rhea, like saying it out loud will make any of this feel more normal.

Rhea makes her clicking sound that doesn’t map to any words but means something like nodding, like acknowledgement.

Lovelace puts her hand on the door, and realizes she’s still holding her comm. She looks down at it, clenches her jaw, then activates it again. “Hey. Lambert. You awake?”

“Captain?” he responds immediately.

“Jesus, Sam, it’s two in the morning. _Why_ are you awake?”

“I—can you not—you’re the one who just called _me!_ Why are _you_ awake?”

Point taken, point ignored. “Rhea just alerted me to an anomaly in engineering,” she says, as if that’s the answer to his question and not an additional fact that is also true. “And I’m heading to investigate, and I want…” _Someone else to see whatever I’m going to see down there. Someone to tell me I’m not crazy. Or, someone who’s willing to tell me I_ am _crazy, if that’s what’s going on._ “... backup.”

They’ve instituted a mandatory buddy system for most station tasks that take anyone anywhere dangerous. Engineering is not supposed to be one of those places, but in the past weeks Lambert has been _meticulously_ strict about carrying out station protocols even for him—he shouldn’t complain, right? Shouldn’t think it’s a weakness, shouldn’t think she’s cracking. It’s just station protocol. It’s fine.

“... of course, Captain.”

“Meet me down at—” She hadn’t thought to ask Rhea where this was, or check the location stamp on the camera feed. “Rhea, where are you seeing—um—”

 _Engineering hallway B,_ she says. _Near Junction 14._

“Engineering hallway B, Junction 14. As soon as you can.”

“How serious is this anomaly?” Lambert asks. “What should I be preparing for?”

“It’s the _Hephaestus._ Who knows? It might be nothing.” It might be everything. It might be the painkillers fogging her rational decision-making or the final steps to a remarkably rapid mental breakdown. “We’ll see, anyway.”

* * *

“Is this… it?” Lovelace asks.

 _He’s here,_ Rhea says. _This is where I’m seeing him._

Lovelace presses her lips together. Those aren’t the same thing.

“Captain?” comes a voice from behind her, tense and alert. (A voice she’s rarely been happy to hear before, but… well, things change, don’t they.)

Lambert clearly rushed straight here. He hasn’t done anything to neaten his hair. It’s longer, curlier, and messier than Lovelace has ever seen it, which just completes this whole scene as _wrong._ They’re not supposed to be here in the middle of the night. Her arm isn’t supposed to be useless, her head isn’t supposed to be foggy, Lambert’s hair isn’t supposed to be a mess, Rhea isn’t supposed to be seeing things that aren’t there, and Fisher isn’t supposed to be dead.

“This is it,” Lovelace says, gesturing with her broken arm because that at least is a gesture that feels normal, and then wincing because ow, why did she do that.

Lambert stares at her for just a little bit too long before turning to try to identify the anomaly.

The hallway is empty. There’s nothing to see.

“What’s the problem?” Lambert asks, finally. “What are we dealing with?”

“Security footage hiccup?” Lovelace says. “Mirage? Something along those lines. Is it still there?”

 _Yes,_ Rhea says, somewhat defensively, _he’s still there._

Lovelace has noticed, over the year-and-a-bit they’ve been up here, that Rhea’s beep-translation typically omits pronouns; this time there’s an insistence that emphasizes the difference. To her side, out of the corner of her eye, she can see Lambert frowning at the console, mouthing a baffled _wait, what?_ as he reads off her message; she ignores him and walks ahead, deliberately, towards the spot on the video. “Hello?” she calls, waving her good arm tentatively in front of her. “Hey? Am I getting close?”

 _He’s moving!_ Rhea says, whistles rising in confusion or alarm, _He’s walking away from you, like he doesn’t even notice. Captain, what’s happening?_

“Captain,” Lambert says, “what’s _happening?”_

Lovelace shakes her head and picks up the pace. She has no god damn clue what’s happening.

Behind her, the pitch of Lambert’s voice is rising even _higher,_ as if that were even possible, “Rhea, what are you two _talking_ about—?”

Lovelace doesn’t stop to read Rhea’s clicked response.

She knows where they are. Rhea and Lambert have to know where they are. It’s the middle of the night, when nothing feels real and everything does, and they’re headed towards airlock 3-B.

“Fisher?” Lovelace calls as she breaks into a run. She has to be catching up, right? What will Rhea see when she reaches the same spot? _“Fisher!”_

She charges down the hall, and—finds herself facing the airlock.

She’d never come down here before two weeks ago. This is only the second time she’s found herself in this place. She suspected she’d be drawn to return here, at some point. She’d expected it to be a nebulous feeling of guilt that did it, though, not something this specifically pointed.

Rhea whistles something. Lovelace doesn’t turn to look.

“… Captain?” Lambert asks, hesitant. (That’s also wrong. Since when does he hesitate to say _anything?)_

She doesn’t want to face anyone right now, but she steels herself, raises her head, and turns around. She hopes it’ll be normal. Expects criticism, impatience maybe. But Lambert is looking at her with a completely new expression of open concern. 

She hates it. She’d rather have the impatient criticism right now.

Lovelace rubs her eyes. She regrets calling him down here. She regrets coming down here. She wants to go to sleep. “Rhea,” she says, “did you show him the video?”

She doesn’t watch the screen as Rhea pulls it up, doesn’t watch Lambert’s reaction. Lovelace turns and reaches out to touch the cold airlock door, as if it might have answers, as if somehow the last place Fisher ever was would ground what she just saw. What she just didn’t see.

“Fisher?” she says, quietly, to the cold metal. “Hey, Mace. You out there?”

Maybe it’s hope. Maybe it _is_ weakness. Maybe it’s just being in the depths of the station in the middle of the night with two other people who don’t understand what’s going on either, the late-night metaphysical chill seeping into them all. Regardless, there is, of course, no answer to her question. Instead, behind her, she hears a baffled squawk from Lambert, “What is—Rhea, what _is_ this? How—?” Then, softer, “Are you… feeling all right? Has this been happening?”

The station creaks, a churning metal sound vibrating through the walls. It’s always made that sound, she’s pretty sure. She thinks, if she tries very hard, she can feel it moving, deep below. She can’t actually feel the station turning, or moving in its orbit, round and round in circles coming back to the same places and going nowhere, but she can imagine it.

“Captain?”

Lovelace blinks, then shakes her head, trying to clear it. She’s up way too late. They all are. That’s why this is happening. That’s all. “Hm?”

“Are, uh, are you—”

“All right?” she says. “Not in the slightest. You?”

“Oh,” he says. “Uh. No. I mean, not… no.”

“Yeah. Good. I wouldn’t be able to trust you if you were.” She sighs. She’s too tired for this. “What are we doing here, Sam?”

She knows her people well enough by now that she can _see_ Lambert considering objecting to this yet again, and can see, on his face, the moment he decides that by this point it’s not something that’s worth it. She’s not sure why this hurts.

“We’re… verifying that… there’s no visible anomaly in the engineering wing. At least, not one that station protocols require us to meaningfully address here,” he says at last. “Sir.”

She steals another glance back at the blank gray airlock door. “And I guess we did that. Got everything done we came here to do.” It isn’t really true, but she has the feeling that staying down here any longer will just be a frustrating exercise in diminishing returns and downward-spiralling feelings. “Dismissed, then. We’re done here.” Then, more quietly, “Go get some sleep, soldier. That’s an order.”

Lambert nods. “Yeah. You too.” He blinks, realizes what he just said, and trips over his words to clarify, “I mean, that’s not an _order,_ too, obviously, from me, I can’t—but—”

She snorts. “Calm down, I get it. And. Yeah. If we’ve learned anything tonight it’s that we all probably need more sleep.” Actually, do AIs have anything even close to equivalent? Lovelace realizes she has no idea. It’s something she feels like she should know. “Rhea, you get some sort of rest too. Or, at least, take care of yourself.” She crosses her arms, and winces at the pain. “That part also goes for everyone.” Including her, maybe. She can try.

With effort, she turns her back on the airlock, and takes the lead, back out of these haunted halls and back up to the closest thing they have to the real world.

The station will keep spinning, round and round in its orbit around the star.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated on whether I should post this or go back totally revamp the concept, but... I felt like, I'm spending a bunch of chapters having Minkowski & co. interact with ghosts that they have no idea who they are that I _strongly imply_ were Lovelace's crew... it felt like an obvious opportunity to go, well, what would happen if, those same ghosts, but, feat. the people who know exactly who they are.  
> Also hey look at Lovelace & Lambert finally earning that ampersand tag.


	10. The Ghost in the Comms Room: Rondo, and Finale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Minkowski deals with the ghost problem.

“Uhhhhhhhhhh Commander?” Eiffel says, poking his head into the main room of the bridge. “So… I didn’t know how to bring this up, but it’s still happening, so I thought you should _probably_ maybe know… there’s a ghost in the comms room.”

Minkowski is busy sorting the navigational data. Yes, it’s day twelve, or thirteen, or whatever the hell it is now; yes, every night the world resets and all the time she spent sorting the data the previous morning is wasted; yes, she is going to keep sorting the damn data every morning anyway because _one_ of these days this nightmare has to end, and then the data will be sorted.

(Waking up this morning on day 426 had been crushing. She had hoped, somehow, that admitting to Eiffel what was happening would break the curse, would snap time out of this hiccup. That’s how it always works, isn’t it? Whenever she finally complains to Dominik that she can’t find her keys, there they are; whenever she finally asks Hera to help troubleshoot some computer problem, it starts working perfectly. But that does not seem to be the case this time. It’s still day 426.)

“I know, Eiffel,” she says through gritted teeth.

“Okay but I mean—wait. You _know?_ ”

She’s had this conversation _how_ many times now? She could recite the back-and-forth by heart if she wanted to. She doesn’t want to.

Minkowski looks up from the console and stares Eiffel in the face. She has no more patience left. This is where it all started. Eiffel’s stupid ghost. Maybe it’s time to face this at the source, to root it out and demand it never, ever come back. Eiffel has a ghost problem? It’s time to address the god damn ghost problem.

“Yes, Officer Eiffel,” she says, her words crisp and sharp. She is the Commander of this station, and she is going to act like it. “There’s a ghost in the comms room, isn’t there? It’s been preventing you from getting your job done. Creating a hostile work environment, you could even say.”

“I mean, _preventing_ is such a strong word—”

“Eiffel, I know you haven’t been in the comms room for more than a week, and I know it’s because of the ghost.”

Eiffel yelps. “I—how did you—Hera?”

“I didn’t!” Hera says. “I mean—”

“It’s my station,” Minkowski says, like she’s said too many times now, “and as I’m sure I’ve told you before, I know everything that goes on here. You can’t hide from me, _Officer Eiffel._ Remember that.” But her jaw is clenched and she pushes herself away from the console, a new energy flowing through her, a new motivation like fire urging her to _go_. “And neither can your ghost. Come on.”

“Come—on?”

“You won’t go into the comms room because it’s haunted, is that right? Then we are going to march over there, _together,_ and deal with that problem.”

“Um, do we _have_ to, because I’m perfectly happy to let—”

“It’s _your_ ghost problem, Eiffel, you are going to be there to find a solution.” Minkowski squares her shoulders and prepares to storm out the door, then considers how many problems she can potentially solve at once. “And, Hera?”

“I didn’t see any ghost,” Hera says.

“Good to know. Eiffel and I will settle that, and in the meantime, I want you to take a look at the nav data I was sorting, and finish the job. If I’m going to spend the morning getting the comms room sorted out, it’ll be more efficient if you can handle that. Can you look at the sorting scheme I’ve started, and finish it?”

“Of course I can,” Hera says, sounding insulted. “Why were you doing that by hand anyway? Do you know how hard it is to watch you humans do anything with data? You’re _excruciatingly_ slow.”

“Good,” Minkowski says. “Do what you’re good at, and be careful with the data, and have all of it there nice and sorted by the time I get back.” Hera hasn’t deleted the nav data in days. Technically never has at all. It might be time to trust her to try again. And if she does delete it all again, well, it’ll be back tomorrow.

With that settled, _now_ Minkowski gets to storm out the door.

She charges to the comms room with Eiffel scrambling behind her. She has only the vaguest idea of how one is traditionally supposed to dispel ghosts, but it doesn’t matter, because she has her own tried-and-true way of dealing with uncooperative elements on this station.

They arrive. Minkowski flings open the door. “Attention! Ghost of the comms room!”

There’s no answer, of course, because the room is empty.

Eiffel hovers nervously a few meters back. Minkowski turns, grabs his wrist, and pulls him towards the doorway. This is for his benefit, after all, and he is going to witness her solving his ghost problem for him. Regardless of whether any restless spirit is present to be convinced by this, _Eiffel_ needs to be.

“All right, Ghost,” Minkowski says to the empty room. It should feel ridiculous; she’s too fired-up to care. If she thinks about it right, it’s almost like being back in drama club. She’s performing. She’s embodying a character. This time the character is Space Station Commander Who Believes In Ghosts And Is Completely Out Of Patience With Them. She spreads her arms wide. Eiffel had better appreciate this. “I’m Commander Renée Minkowski of the _Hephaestus_ ; this is _my_ station, and if you’re on my station, you’re bound by _my_ rules, and you answer to _me_. Understand?”

There’s still no answer, of course, because the room is still empty.

“Um, Minkowski, you don’t want to piss off the ghost—”

“No,” Minkowski says, “I _do,_ if that will finally make this ghost pay attention.” She points accusingly into the (still empty) comms room. “You care about the operations of this station, right? You only get mad at Communications Officer Eiffel when he’s slacking off at his _assigned duties,_ don’t you?”

“And that time Cheeto dust clogged the vents and I nearly passed out,” Eiffel says. “Though that one may have been a carbon dioxide buildup making me light-headed.”

“When he’s slacking off _and_ when he’s putting himself, the station, and the mission in danger,” Minkowski says, because, sure. “So you _care_ about things being in order around here! More than Officer Eiffel does, evidently! _But_ your threatening aura and presence is making Eiffel _worse_ at his job!”

Eiffel finally realizes where she’s going with this. “Yeah!”

“And I know you must think you’re helping but you’re very, very much _not!”_

 _“_ Yeah!”

“You must have noticed by now that Officer Eiffel is a noted coward with the work ethic and general disposition of a startled squirrel, and he is easily frightened and easily distracted from his job!”

“Yeah!—wait, hey—”

“I run a tight ship and I am _incredibly_ disappointed in _anyone,_ including _you,_ who decides that your own petty resentments are more important than fulfilling our collective mission here. Pryce and Carter’s tip #21 is very clear on this point!”

“Y…eah?” Eiffel falters.

“Which we _all know,_ right?”

“… yeah?” Eiffel's responses are notably weaker now.

He’s the worst. Why is she even humoring him. (It’s because she’s the Commander, she has to remind herself, which means she is the designated Bigger Person in every scenario, and solving the problems her subordinates raise is her job. And because she’s stuck in a time loop and has no better ideas anymore.) “Pryce and Carter’s #21,” she says. “‘Be sure to complete your assigned duties and station maintenance tasks before worrying about anything and everything else.’ That goes for all of us. That goes for me, that goes for Officer Eiffel, and that goes for _you,_ Mr. Ghost. No, you’re on my station. I’m your commanding officer. You’re _Officer_ Ghost and your assigned duties as of right now are to stay out of Eiffel’s way and let him do his job, no matter how inefficiently and incompetently he does so!”

“Yeah,” Eiffel says, his enthusiasm somewhat dampened. He’s still standing behind her, though, looking back and forth across the comms room for a response, of which there is none, because the room is empty.

“So,” Minkowski says, and despite everything it’s cathartic to finally just yell directly at her problems and tell them to stop, “I’d better not hear _any_ more reports about you spooking Eiffel while he’s in the comms room, understand? He has a job here—” She stops short of saying he has an _important_ job here— “and if you don’t stop getting in his way I will _not_ let it stand. This is your formal warning. This is your _polite_ warning. If I get any more ghost reports I _will_ come back in here and build an EMP bomb and blast you off this garbage barge of a station _myself._ ”

Eiffel whoops. Before he can get too pleased with himself, she whirls to face him. “And if they’re _fraudulent_ ghost reports to avoid work, Officer Eiffel, I will blast _you_ off this garbage barge of a station, do I make myself clear?”

“Sir!” Eiffel says. “Yes sir!”

“Good.” She points at Eiffel. She points into the (still empty) comms room. “Both of you, behave, or you will have to deal with _me_.”

Eiffel salutes, then hesitantly sidles into the comms room and looks around.

“How is it now, Officer Eiffel?”

“It’s…” He licks his finger, holds it up to the air, waits. “Nope. No ghostly presence.” Then, after a pause that is maybe awed and maybe terrified and Minkowski will accept either, “...wow.”

Minkowski gestures at the radio in the console. Eiffel gives her a thumbs-up and crouches gingerly into the seat. “Allllll right,” he says, “that was frightening. Congrats, pretty sure you managed to put the fear of Minkowski into a ghost. This had better work.”

“It will,” Minkowski says. “Trust me. And you have nine days’ worth of scans to make up. Get cracking, Officer.”

“... yep,” Eiffel says. “Sure love to have that problem solved, huh.”

It’s back to baseline, at least. As Minkowski shuts the door behind her, she hears him tap the mic, and say, “Well, my dear and loyal listeners out there in the void, after that very strange and scary morning, I wish I could say I’m pleased that I am back. But we all know that’s a lie. Did ya miss me…?”

There’s a lightness in her step, a pleased bounce that has nothing to do with the lack of gravity, as she strides back to the bridge. “Hera?” she says. “Have the nav data sorted?”

“It was easy,” Hera says. “I added some better metadata, and to the recording process too, so it should sort automatically now as it comes in to avoid either of us having to go through the insulting manual spreadsheet process. It would have taken you _hours._ Are you really that stubborn, Commander?”

“Yep!” Minkowski says breezily. “The data is there in a nice table for me to look at it? All of it?”

“Of course all of it,” Hera says. “What did you expect me to do with it?”

“Oh, nothing, just verifying. Thank you, Hera. Good work. I knew I could count on you.”

Two annoyances down and it’s not even lunchtime. She might as well go three for three. Minkowski hits her comm. “Hilbert!”

“Commander Minkowski?”

“Whatever you did with the composter yesterday is causing a problem. I want you to check it before it explodes.”

“Was new fertilizer formula. More efficient, more nutrients. Will not explode.”

“Will explode,” Minkowski says. “Drop what you’re doing and go check it now. That’s an order, Doctor.”

He grumbles. “Paranoid waste of time I could be spending on—”

“Just _check_ it, Hilbert, that’s our air supply you’re leaving unattended. Hera, if he doesn’t leave in fifteen minutes, play that loud annoying noise in his lab until he goes and checks the composter.”

Hilbert does not sound nearly as resentful when he calls back fifteen minutes later. “Composter _is_ building up unstable gasses at alarming rate,” he says. “Not what was supposed to happen at all. These chemical interactions—how did you know?”

“Call it a lucky guess,” Minkowski says. “Commander’s intuition. Do what you need to do to make it _not_ explode, and alert me if you need anything.”

“Of course, Commander Minkowski.”

She grins, all her teeth showing like a threat. Whatever the star or God or time or a ghost is doing to her, she is not going to let it push her around. She’s solved it, every stupid problem that happens today, and now that she’s solved it she can keep this up as long as this force can. She _can_. Just let it try to stop her.

If she’s worked out the rules, and she’s pretty sure she has, she can handle day 426 thrown at her as many times as it damn well takes.

* * *

The next morning, she opens her eyes to see the patriotic abs of Sexy Abe Lincoln in her face.

She’s still not sure why her Goddard Futuristics-provided space sleeping bag has buff, shirtless Founding Fathers printed on the lining fabric, but it barely even registers anymore—except that for the past eleven (twelve? thirteen?) days she’s woken up to the sight of sexy pinup George Washington, printed slightly to ol’ Honest Abe’s left.

It might be nothing. She tries not to hope. She does anyway.

Minkowski counts down, softly, as she takes each breath. _Dziesięć, dziewięć, osiem_ … and at _jeden_ she makes herself say, “Good morning, Hera. What day is it?”

“Oh,” Hera says, apparently taken aback. “Good morning, Commander Minkowski. It’s day 427 today. Thursday, July 24.”

“Day 427,” Minkowski says, and her sudden laughter makes Hera crackle in alarm.

“Commander Minkowski? Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s great, Hera. Day 427. That’s fantastic. You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure? Yesterday was day 426. The day before that was day 425. That’s typically how numbers work. And numbers are something I do pride myself on being good at.”

“That is, typically, how numbers work,” Minkowski agrees. She rolls over and scrambles for her diary in the footlocker under her bed. She’s stopped checking in the mornings for the last couple days, but…

She opens to the ribbon, and there, in the scratchiest, most awful handwriting she’s ever produced, is yesterday’s entry, _To jest jedenasty dzień? Dwunasty dzień??? AAAAAAAAAAA_

She lets the diary go, lets herself stretch out, flops back on her pillow as best as zero-g will let her.

“Are you… sick?” Hera says. “I know this is sometimes a good human reaction but it’s also an extremely abnormal reaction for you and abnormal reactions can mean humans are sick, and I don’t know which one this is.”

“I’m not sick,” Minkowski says. “I’m celebrating day 427.”

“Oh. Um. Okay. Happy…” Hera pauses, rifling through her data banks for the appropriate congratulation. “Pioneer Day? In Utah? Did you ever live in Utah?”

“Never!” Minkowski says brightly.

“Oh, then. Happy… one hundred days since you declared that you weren’t going to shave your legs anymore?”

“Best decision I ever made,” Minkowski says, closing her eyes again and letting her face nestle back into her pillow.

“I really agree,” Hera says, the sound filtering in from above her. “Do you know how _disturbing_ it is to watch you and Officer Eiffel slice pieces of your own bodies off every day? There’s no way that’s what’s supposed to happen.”

“Mm-hmm,” Minkowski says, barely listening, letting the tension flow out of her muscles and be absorbed by the strong arms of the historically inaccurate and impractically attired minutemen. She’s going to let herself sleep in. Just lie here in her warm, hauntingly decorated bedding for maybe even a full thirty minutes, because it's a new day and she _can_.

* * *

She doesn’t let herself fully believe it, though, until day 428. Friday. One full 24-hour day before she’ll believe it wasn’t a fluke, because if this isn’t an accident—if this is somehow malevolent—going back to day 426 after that one day of progress would be a cruelty of a whole new level.

“How’s the metadata tagging scheme working, Hera?”

“Smooth as planned, Commander,” she says. “I don’t know why it wasn’t set up like that in the first place.”

“Me either,” Minkowski says.

At lunch, she asks Hilbert, “Do you have a new fertilizer mix calculated for the greenhouse?”

“Of course,” he responds. “Previous mix was absurd. Don’t know what I was thinking. Flaws were obvious. _This_ fertilizer will not only be 12% more effective for potato and bean plants, will also not make composter explode.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” Minkowski says, and makes a mental note to check the greenhouse twice a day, and stock more fire extinguishers there, just in case.

In the evening, she meets Eiffel in the hall, casually, like she hadn’t been planning to. “Eiffel. How’s the work going?”

“Pointless as ever! Thanks for asking.” 

“No more ghost problems?”

“Haven’t seen any ectoplasmic phantoms from beyond the veil since your _Full Metal Jacket_ impression in there. You’re scarier than any ghost and he knows it.”

“Good to hear,” Minkowski says. “Keep that in mind, Officer Eiffel.”

“Bit hard to forget, yeah.”

Time moves on.

* * *

It’s weeks later, after Minkowski has sternly willed herself to believe that any time shenaniganry was a very strange and very elaborate dream that doesn’t matter anymore, that Eiffel calls her from the comms room. “Hey Minkowski, message from Command for you.”

“Patch it through,” Minkowski says. She’s just finished her afternoon survey of the greenhouse. It hasn’t exploded all month. (Hilbert’s lab has, but Hilbert’s lab at least only produces vile coffee substitute and not oxygen.)

“It’s just a couple lines of text. ‘To Commander Minkowski: your report was received and the anomalies filed. If you’re reading this message, you’ve clearly worked it out on your own. If not, good luck.’ Real helpful guys, Command.”

“What was this in response to?” Minkowski asks. The suspicion takes a few seconds to arise. She quashes it back down.

There’s a slight rustle as Eiffel shrugs. “ _You’re_ asking _me?_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we come to our dramatic denouement (though not the last chapter, there's still one more week with an epilogue coming, stay tuned)! Thank you to [deliverusfromsburb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliverusfromsburb/pseuds/deliverusfromsburb), [G_J_Smith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/G_J_Smith/pseuds/G_J_Smith), and [SkazuhiraMiller](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkazuhiraMiller) for being excited to see this every week and for the inspiration for some _important_ and _delightful_ details such as "Minkowski's space sleeping bag has [this fabric](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1juiyf/at_joann_fabrics_the_british_are_comingand_so_am_i/) lining the inside".


	11. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things change. Some things don't.

“Hm. They sent you the same garbage they sent us, huh,” Lovelace says.

Minkowski grumbles as she rearranges the MREs in the storage room serving as the pantry. “It’s food. If you want to eat while you’re here, this is what there is.”

Lovelace counts out the protein bars into bins. “Not complaining. But we’re going to get off this station before running out of food becomes an issue, so I don’t see why—”

“If you want to eat, you’re also going to help rearrange the rations we were given for three people to now support four. In case we _can’t_ fix your shuttle before mission end.”

“There won’t _be_ a mission end, I don’t know why you haven’t realized that—”

“Ladies!” Eiffel says brightly. “Ladies. We are all very terrified of everything right now, so, how about we indulge in our last day of wanton snacking before rationing starts and _not_ provoke the good Captain into accidentally blowing us all up? Have a welcome-back-to-the-station party. Happy space Mardi Gras. Space… Thursday Gras? What day is it?”

“It’s Wednesday,” Minkowski says. She's starting to suspect that it's Wednesdays that are bad luck. “Mercredi Gras. But—wait, no, it is _not_ Mercredi Gras, there is no last day of wanton snacking! We need to be concerned about food immediately.”

Eiffel shifts the large collection of Spam cans in his arms to prevent them from floating away. “Just trying to help, guys.”

“Don’t bother,” Lovelace says. “I’m sure there are entirely inflexible _station regulations_ governing all of this. Can’t argue with the holy word of Pryce and Carter.”

“Oh, no,” Minkowski says, her voice sharp, “This one is _all_ me, because I’m apparently the only one taking this seriously. Pryce and Carter’s tips 944 and 945 do cover this situation, but, ah…” She trails off, realizing what she was about to say.

“But?” Eiffel prompts. “If Pryce and Carter’s says we can do Mercredi Gras I take back up to half of the mean things I’ve ever said about it.”

“Does it?” Lovelace asks. “Because Pryce and Carter’s _never_ says anything even remotely that helpful.”

“No,” says Minkowski. “Number 413 specifically—never mind. In order to ensure adequate food resources, Pryce and Carter’s 944 recommends we kill you and 945 implies we should eat you.”

That, at least, finally earns silence.

Eiffel slowly raises his hand, scattering Spam cans everywhere. “I, uh, want to state for the record that I don’t want to eat Captain Lovelace.”

“We’re not eating Captain Lovelace.”

“I saw this X-Files episode. You become immortal and then you die.”

“What—nobody’s eating Captain Lovelace!”

“You could eat Dr. Hilbert,” Hera offers. “If you’re after a net-zero change in the number of humans.”

“We’re not eating Hilbert either!”

“I calculated it. He has as many calories to offer as one hundred and twenty-five point two cans of Spam. It’s worth considering.”

“Nobody’s eating anybody!”

“Glad we’re having this debate,” Lovelace says drily.

“We _have_ the food! It is _fine!_ Hera and I spent all afternoon yesterday going through our food stores and greenhouse projections, and putting together a rations plan that will support all four of us _just fine_ as long as we stick to it. You both saw the chart. You both know there is a plan. Nobody needs to eat anybody. Now help me sort out what we have! We could have been _done_ by now!”

The food gets distributed into labelled boxes magnetized to the shelves. The charts are taped to the walls, on prominent display. The silence is productive and, while not friendly, not quite to the point of sullen, either.

Until Lovelace finds the pile of plastic packets shoved to the back of one of the bins. 

“Oh, hey, you got Hexes™ too, huh?” she says, pulling one out. “Didn’t see those listed on the austerity chart at all—are _they_ free for wantonly snacking on today?”

She tears it open just in time for both Minkowski and Eiffel to lunge for her and shout, “Captain, _no!”_

_~_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that concludes my first successful serial fic! Thank you all!


End file.
